Promoting Entrepreneurship in HEIs: Leading and Facilitating University Spin-Off Ventures

Introduction

Human population has never been more highly educated than today and the benefits of education to individuals and societies are enormous. Countries are now expanding their education systems, seeing education as an indispensable ingredient of modernization and progress. The problem education is facing refers to productivity and efficiency, i.e. the balance between resources invested and the outcomes, in terms of students’ performance. This issue is even more striking when education is compared against other sectors, which have realized enormous productivity gains in past decades. Radical advances in technology have not yet led to similar improvements in education. Even though governments have invested a lot, it has not yet been possible to associate availability and use of technology with improvements in learning outcomes. So far, we have witnessed mere quantitative expansion, but bringing qualitative changes and innovation in HEIs is needed.

Entrepreneurship is main driver of creativity and growth. Small and medium sector is crucial for maintaining and improving competitiveness of EU economy. Significant correlation has been identified in past decades between entrepreneurship and business performance in terms of innovation, employment creation, technological change and increased productivity. Unfortunately, until nowadays EU is not fully exploiting its entrepreneurial potential, with entrepreneurial activities at European universities significantly lacking behind when compared with the rest of the world. European Commission (EC) is estimating that more than half, around 11 million students at the higher educational level do not have access to entrepreneurial education, whether through in- or extra-curricular activities.

The EU focus on entrepreneurship education is fueled by the belief that entrepreneurship is corner stone for both the member states and Europe, in transforming future economic growth and competitiveness. Entrepreneurship education can be broadly defined as all activities aiming to foster entrepreneurial mindsets, attitudes and skills and covering a range of aspects such as idea generation, start-up, growth and innovation. Entrepreneurship is, to a large extent, practical activity, meaning that the real-life experience-based learning from what others have done before is crucial. Therefore, entrepreneurial education is facing the challenge and students’ need to recognize and be able to identify with successful entrepreneurs, through implementation of ‘learning by doing’ methodology.

In order to promote entrepreneurship in higher education, it is possible to apply transformational leadership both in classroom context and in all superordinate-subordinate relationships. Transformational leadership was positively associated with students’ motivation, satisfaction, perceptions of teacher credibility, academic performance, affective and cognitive learning (Balwant, 2016), and consequently, has positive influence on university innovations (Elrehail, Emeagwali, Alsaad, & Alzghoul, 2018). Transformational leadership is typically conceptualized as four dimensions, including charisma, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation (Bass, 1990).

University spin-offs constitute an economically important sub-group of high-tech start-up firms. Different types of spin-offs can be identified regarding to the nature of their link with the university, resource base and business model: venture capital backed, prospector and lifestyle type, which can adopt contrasting types of growth (Wright, Clarysse, Mustar, & Lockett, 2008). Since academic entrepreneurs generally lack key resources, different strategies, including incubator models, can be exhibited by universities to promote commercialization of knowledge.

The main purpose of this chapter is to contribute to the literature and existing theories on building entrepreneurial university by highlighting the relevance of developing entrepreneurial competences, transformational leadership style and advocate in favor of spin-offs as one of the strategies for implementation of innovative ideas in academic setting. The study extends our understanding of the emergence of an entrepreneurial initiative in academic context and provides more thorough analysis of a university spin-off ventures. The chapter also helps to bridge the industry–academia research gap by providing more fine-grained analysis. The study is also aimed to raise the awareness of benefits various actors in entrepreneur-university-business interaction might have.