The Role of Universities in the Development of Entrepreneurship

Abstract

In the current international competitive environment, the production of innovation is more complicated than companies, individually or as a group, or researchers who work individually or collectively can handle alone. In other words, the production of innovation requires a system of national support and pragmatism delivered in such a way that in addition to firms, other social institutions, such as higher education institutions, play a fundamental role. In response to these new expectations, these institutions have pushed to introduce internal change and evolution of interaction with the socio-economic environment, resulting in the emergence of a new generation of entrepreneurial universities. As knowledge is increasingly becoming an important component of innovation, universities, as producers of knowledge and its publication, play a wider role. The emergence of the entrepreneurial university is, in fact, a response to the growing importance of knowledge in a national and regional system of innovation and for the university, as an institution that is the source of its transfer and technology, it is economically advantageous. In the last two decades, governments around the world have seen the potential of universities to behave in an innovative way to promote the national interest, despite differences in academic and industrial systems. This paper examines the factors influencing an approach to the entrepreneurial university, its definition and concept, and investigates examples of entrepreneurial activities.