Pathways to the entrepreneurial university: Towards a global convergence

Abstract

This paper analyzes the transition to the entrepreneurial university as part of a broader shift to a knowledge-based economy, arising from a complex interplay between exogenous (top-down) and endogenous factors (bottom-up) of a more or less similar nature, combined in different ways in different countries. Drawing on the experience of four countries (US, Sweden, Japan and Brazil) with different institutional trajectories and degrees of academic entrepreneurial transformation, under varying degrees of state control and levels of university initiative, we argue that a global convergence is currently taking shape toward entrepreneurial universities playing a central role in a knowledge-based economy that moves beyond etatism and pure market relations to an intermediate position within a triple helix regime. The role of public venture capital in financing the transition to the entrepreneurial university and its possible interventions in a counter-cyclical business model, which is also active in periods of economic downturn, are also discussed. © Beech Tree Publishing 2008.