Smart policy mixes for stimulating university-based ecosystems: relevance & engagement in an age of excellence and uniqueness Keynote presentation to “University based entrepreneurship & regional development”, Pécs, Hungary 30 th November 2017 Paul Benneworth, CHEPS, the Netherlands.
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Smart policy mixes for stimulating
university-based ecosystems: relevance & engagement in an age of excellence and uniqueness
Keynote presentation to
“University based entrepreneurship & regional
development”,
Pécs, Hungary 30th November 2017
Paul Benneworth, CHEPS, the Netherlands.
Acknowledgements
ICUBERD: Atilla et al
Sponsors of antecedent
research
Jos van den Broek, Lisa Nieth,
Martin Stienstra
EURASHE, ECIU, EuSPRI
Overview of presentation
Entrepreneurship and the emerging academic knowledge exploitation agenda
Academic entrepreneurship and the limitations of spin-off companies
Towards a broader perspective on university entrepreneurship activities
Towards a research agenda sensitive to university entrepreneurship in the round
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE
EMERGING ACADEMIC
KNOWLEDGE EXPLOITATION
AGENDA
Part 1
1. The rise of the science-based economy
“Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how to live without the deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for ages past. Advances in science will also bring higher standards of living, will lead to the prevention or cure of diseases, will promote conservation of our limited national resources, and will assure means of defense against aggression.
But to achieve these objectives - to secure a high level of employment, to maintain a position of world leadership - the flow of new scientific knowledge must be both continuous and substantial.”
(Bush, 1945, ch. 1)
2. Universities as a critical knowledge provider
Universities survived as an institution because they have always met societal needs
Universities today produce the building blocks of the knowledge economy, “knowledge capital”
Universities organise activities where society (firms, policy-makers, civil society) learn
Teaching
Research
Service
Facilities
Universities Society
3. The academic entrepreneurial process
Academic consultancy
policies/ careers
Technology transfer, Incubators/
science parks
Policy instruments for technology transfer e.g. innovation vouchers
CONTEXT
Opportunity
recognition
Knowledge
creation
(research)
Knowledge
capitalisation
(venturing)
Firm balance
sheet growth
Firm
absorptive
capacity
Market
demand
Strengthened
steering core
4. The anatomy of the ‘entrepreneurial university’
Extended
development
periphery
Stimulated
academic
heartland
Diversified
funding
sources
Intergrated
entrepreneurial
culture
After Clark, 1998
1. Entrepreneurship is university strategic
objective
2. EE seeks both to raise entrepreneurial
attitudes and drive economic growth
3. Clear incentives/ rewards for those
supporting graduate entrepreneurship
4. Recruitment practices incorporate
entrepreneurial/ support activities
5. The standard academic entrepreneurship story
Professor Desire Collins (KUL)’s
tpa patent made €1bn
Formation of Leuven R&D –
huge tpa patent income
LRD became best-practice,
patents/ spin-outs goal
◦ 95% of patents lose money,
◦ 90% of spin-offs fail
◦ 90% of survivors <10 employees
6. The policy discourse of academic
entrepreneurship
Line 1: Entrepreneurial Impact
Research IP Spin-off companySocial
benefit
Publication
Citations
ExcellenceLine 2: Excellence
Desire by policy makers to
make academic
entrepreneurship something
that happens automatically as
a result of excellent research
7. Why are we still talking about this?
“The problem of democratisation brings up the question of a university’s society function in the very broadest sense of the term. It includes not only the development of access to qualifications, but the production of knowledge and the social significance of that knowledge. It also involves a change in the sharing of responsibility for the development of knowledge and teaching…If the university is to be effectively integrated into the community, it must no longer concern only those who attend the university, namely the teachers and the students. It should be possible to pass on one’s skills without being a teacher and to receive training without being a student” (CERI, 1982, p. 13).
ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP
AND THE LIMITATIONS OF SPIN-
OFF COMPANIES
Part 1I
8. Entrepreneurship – a Schumpeterian
perspective
Joseph Schumpeter, 1883-1950
The Entrepreneur as an actor can perceive what others
cannot, a way to realise an improvement idea
Improvement ideas (‘innovations’) make things better/
make better things within existing constraints/ frontiers
opportunities making all kinds of asset inexpensively
available (workers, machines, patents, sites)
Entrepreneur makes use of these latent assets via
creative new combinations “innovation”
8a. An entrepreneur ‘builds on the balance’
A Schumpeterian perspective is a good starting point for understanding how entrepreneurs create societal improvement
Entrepreneurs building various kinds of structures which through their function have a “capitalising” effect.
That “capital” provides capacity to do desirable things
9. University spin-offs ‘building on the balance’
Entrepreneur creates
opportunity exploitation
structure
Generalised knowledge
transformed into working
asset
‘Better mousetrap’ effect sees
premium price build growth
Investment/ growth create
regional benefits
10. Producing general societal benefits
Individual benefits
(firm growth)
Meso benefits
(regional growth)
Macro benefits
(GDP growth)
Research creates
useful knowledge
“Research benefits
private firms”
“Research drives
local development”
“Research benefits
all society”
11. Why don’t spin-offs solve society’s problems?
Bozeman (2002): public value failure
(alternative to ‘market failure’):
1) No mechanisms to articulate public value
(2) “imperfect monopolies” occur;
(3) benefit hoarding occurs;
(4) scarcity of providers of public value;
(5) short termism
(6) Competition >> public services
(7) market transactions threaten
fundamental human subsistence.
In cases of public value failure:
Solutions must emerge outside formal
market governance frameworks to
challenge existing incumbents
e.g. HIV drug patents.
12. The normative model of the entrepreneurial
university
From technology transfer meta-theory
To an appealing/ popular policy concept
“Universities
can do this”
“Universities
should do
this”
“Universities
are about only
this”
13. The category error of the entrepreneurial
universityMy contention: the reason that we are no closer – 35 years after CERI and 20 years after Burton Clark – to understanding what it means to be an “entrepreneurial university” is that we are making a category error,
we are fixating on the company and not what really matters –universities building structures that allow their knowledge to drive societal capitalisation
TOWARDS A BROADER
PERSPECTIVE ON UNIVERSITY
ENTREPRENEURSHIP ACTIVITIES
Part 1II
14. What kinds of capitalization systems can
university entrepreneurs develop? Starting heuristic: universities
can build systems whose functioning drives ‘social capitalisation’ effect
‘Capital’ allows more people to do more of the good things they like in life
Puttnam’s Social Capital: organisation allows other systems to be controlled & directed
15. Universities benefit from these activities
University
Academic
leaders
Admin &
services
Academic
teachers
Postdocs
Ph.D.s
Post-grad
students
Undergrad
students
Department
Academic
teachers
Postdocs
Ph.D.s
Post-grad
students
Undergrad
students
Department
Degree courses
Research projects
Placements
Society
Firms
Policy-
makers
NGOs
Civil
Society
Degree courses
Research projects
Placements
Hosting placements
Funding consultancy
Guest Lectures
Guest researchers
Seminar speakers
Fieldtrips
Career Fairs
‘Living Laboratories’
Giving interviews
16. Universities are loosely coupled communities
Some tasks need central co-ordination
Knowledge processes don’t follow identical paths
Can’t impose single approach (tight coupling) on diverse paths
University have to co-ordinate sufficiently respecting diversity
‘Loose coupling’
17. Academic entrepreneurs reconfiguring
knowledge communities to capitalize in society University entrepreneurs are
building structures and systems
that support knowledge activities,
through those knowledge activities capitalise on the balance,
In terms of the ‘multiple bottom line’, (“profit, people, planet, place”)
18. The narrowing gaze of technological
entrepreneurship
Universities have become
‘strategic entities’
Priorities made following
management knowledge
Academic entrepreneurship
mutually beneficial (social
compact, income generation)
Strong institutional research
push for venture formation
Focus on TBE
19. Towards a broader definition of ‘academic
entrepreneurship’ The risk of focusing on how
universities can create technologies that can benefit society
Rather than understanding universities’ potential to help new knowledge solve societal problems
Thereby risk losing academic capacity within e’ship studies to talk about what really matters in university knowledge and society.
The baseline for what it means to be an entrepreneurial can be shifted away
From a university that is good at taking generic knowledge created in global communities, privatising it and then creating growth businesses,
To a university that is good at taking generic knowledge and creating localised structures that in turn have more control over their own situations.
FIRST REFLECTIONS ON BUILDING
A RESEARCH AGENDA SENSITIVE
TO BROAD VARIANT ACADEMIC
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Part 1V
20. Academic entrepreneurship – a
Schumpeterian perspective (2)
The ‘academic’ entrepreneur realises latent value dormant
within formalised (scholarly) knowledge
Translation of knowledge to non-scholarly domain to where
creatively with other assets “academic innovation”
May be commercial, but growing emphasis on other domains:
• public sector innovation (govt)
• green innovation (environmental)
• social innovation (with community sector)
21. Potential areas for academic
entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship: the
Georgetown Masters
programme
Arts & Humanities-based
entrepreneurship: the case of
Manels
Democratic e’ship:
community-based research
activities
Environmental E’ship:
developing new forms of
collective land ownership
Public Sector E’ship: Tampere’s
Universities and its path-
shifting activities
Making universities more
entrepreneurial: the case of
the UT
22. Steering that through HEI structures
a) the strategic role played by the central steering core, in articulating a shared vision and strategic platform for engagement;
b) a supportive administrative apparatus, ensuring institutionalization of rules and procedures as well as support/incentive structures across the board;
c) commitment of key individuals across the academic heartland, recognizing new external opportunities and directly engaging with external parties; and
d) the degree of coupling between core and peripheral structures and activities, ensuring spill-over effects and mutually reinforcing synergies
Steering Core
(UAS Leadership)
Academic Heartland
(Departments, Centers, etc.)
Administrative Machinery
(Rules, procedures, incentives, etc.)
Internal Coupling
(Coordination & Linkages)
Mission, Functions, Structures &
Activities
University
management
23. Entrepreneurial activities becoming
peripheral to universities
Support staff &
project
management
Academics
Pressures/ ‘Scholarly Drift’
World-class status & ranking
Research-led profile & evaluation
Maximising publication outputs
Focus on
research
outputs
(abstract-
general)
Entrepreneurship
(specific-useful)
forced to periphery
1. Entrepreneurship is university strategic
objective
2. EE seeks both to raise entrepreneurial
attitudes and drive economic growth
3. Clear incentives/ rewards for those
supporting graduate entrepreneurship
4. Recruitment practices incorporate
entrepreneurial/ support activities
?
24. Towards a future research agenda for
academic entrepreneurship How can we better understand,
conceptualise and manage the entrepreneurial processes by which orchestrate the combination of different kinds of knowledge resources situated within distinct territorial structures?
these divergent system logics of knowledge production within which entrepreneurs operate,
how they produce emergent regional knowledge architectures through networks and coalitions of entrepreneurs, and
how policy-makers can optimise engagement to support both private benefits and create collective/ public knowledge assets.
25. The persistant importance of the
entrepreneurial system How can we apply the key
elements of academic entrepreneurship studies to these new domains?
How can we exploit studies in these new domains to enrich TBE disciplinary core?
How can we enrich understanding of e.g. knowledge fixation with novel domains?
What motivates (social) entrepreneurs?
How can we upscale (environmentally) useful innovations?
How can we exercise (democratic) control over new technological avenues?
How do entrepreneurs deal with symbolic/ cultural value?