Introduction: Navigating the frontiers of entrepreneurial university research

Abstract

As a concept entrepreneurial university was evoked some 20 years ago in order for the universities to increase their societal impact. Since then important changes have taken place in the universities and their relations with the society. As such it is necessary to revisit what we already know and how the technological, environmental and social changes and the different context bring for future research questions and themes that deserve the attention of entrepreneurship scholars. Existing research adopts both an idealized view of entrepreneurial university as the desired movement as well as a more skeptical view depicting it as a move towards the ‘performative university’. It is important to further research on these different fronts as well as to develop bridges between them to envision future development of it as well as to imagine the new, alternative entrepreneurial universities.