Entrepreneurial university, spin-offs and governance: the example of Amsterdam university
Résumé
The concept of the entrepreneurial university covers multiple characterizations and definitions. Guerrero et al. (2016) define the entrepreneurial university as one where entrepreneurial awareness and engagement exist in all arenas of the university, i.e., at all levels of the university, in all fields, and with the goal of social and economic development. The entrepreneurial university is designed by some scholars as combining a third mission of economic and social development, alongside to the first two missions of teaching and research (Etzkowitz, Zhou, 2017). Although the concept of "third mission", is highly questioned (Compagnucci et Spigarelli, 2020), it is indeed based on the idea that the university should act in favor of the local society and its economic development.
The objective of this paper is to examine the modes of governance of the entrepreneurial university, by focusing on one of its key dimensions: the emergence of university spin-offs. The latter are described as "new firms created to commercially exploit some knowledge, technology or research results developed within a university" (Pirnay, et al., 2003, p. 356). For some scholars university spin-offs embody the emblem of the entrepreneurial university concept : the number of new spin-offs can be seen as a measure of the performance of the university's third mission.
We raise the following questions: How does a university, as an organization- support the creation of spin-offs? What are the structures and procedures involved? What are the main governance principles at work? While university spin-offs are understood as both a process and a formal outcome of technology transfer (Audrestch, Caiazza, 2016), our research focuses on the process dimension and is motivated by the following arguments. On the one hand little work has been done on the specific structures and governance modes implemented within universities to facilitate the creation of spin-offs. On the other hand, examining the organizational level - with the university as the unit of analysis - provides insights into the governance of so-called entrepreneurial universities. What is the « nature » of their mode(s) of governance? Is the "entrepreneurial" dimension only represented by the number of start-up created?
Current research is focused on the need to renew public policies for research and innovation (Kuhlmann and Rip, 2018). The great societal challenges - such as global warming or the ageing of the population - illustrate the difficulties of current "command-and-control" policies that focus on a top-down mechanism. Indeed, today's major challenges are characterized by a high degree of uncertainty, variability and a multidisciplinary dimension. It is necessary to rethink the action of public actors. New paradigms of governance of research and innovation policies are emerging: adaptive governance, reflexive governance… and recently tentative governance (Kuhlmann et al., 2019). This desire to develop new approaches to governance may also be linked to the movement for responsible research and innovation (RRI) (Owen et al., 2012; Gay et al., 2019).
In order to deal with theses issues, we draw on a field study conducted at the University of Amsterdam between February and July 2019. 38 semi-structured regarding the support provided by the university to spin-off creation were conducted. The interviewees are distinguished into two groups. The first group includes members of the university who support spin-offs. The other group consists of spin-offs members, mainly founding scientists and compagnies CEOs. These interviews were recorded and coded with the MaxQDA software. They were completed by the study of official documents, reports and the university's website in order to understand at a relevant level of granularity the organizational structures of the University of Amsterdam.
The main results are as follows. The examination of Amsterdam university’s architecture illustrates the desire to stimulate spin-offs through the creation of relevant numerous structures, both public and private. Second, while internal structures have emerged (incubators, accelerators, POOCs), the effectiveness of the coordination may be questionned, illustrating the complexity of the relationships between these structures. Third, the strategy of developing in Amsterdam, an entrepreneurial university oriented towards local development does not initially come from the university, but from local political actors. The perceived risk is that the university members of these structures these structures do not share the same objectives. Fourth, while the University of Amsterdam has built relationships with other universities in the region, no particular strategy for building relationships with non-university partners has been identified.
From the governance perspective, the approach observed remains largely centered on a top-down process and does not sufficiently include stakeholders, in particular collaboration with non-academic partners that would ensure a more solid and sustainable local anchoring. Moreover, the use of diverse stakeholders, associations, citizens' collectives... could make possible to combine the creation of spin-offs with the movement of RRI. From a conceptual point of view, our research aims at developing a reflection on the links between the concepts of entrepreneurial university, responsible research and innovation and governance mode. It is in line with current work on the transformation of innovation policies (Shot and Steinmueller, 2018).
Références
Audretsch, D., & Caiazza, R. (2016). Technology transfer and entrepreneurship: cross-national analysis. The Journal of Technology Transfer, 41(6), 1247-1259.
Compagnucci, L., & Spigarelli, F. (2020). The Third Mission of the university: A systematic literature review on potentials and constraints. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 161, 120284.
Etzkowitz, H., & Zhou, C. (2017). The triple helix: University–industry–government innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.
Gay, C., Liotard, I., & Revest, V. (2019). Les concours d’innovation en ligne: un instrument pertinent pour la recherche et l’innovation responsable. Innovations, (2), 129-150.
Guerrero, M., Urbano, D., Fayolle, A., Klofsten, M., & Mian, S. (2016). Entrepreneurial universities: emerging models in the new social and economic landscape. Small Business Economics, 47(3), 551-563.
Kuhlmann, S., & Rip, A. (2018). Next-generation innovation policy and grand challenges. Science and public policy, 45(4), 448-454.
Kuhlmann, S., Stegmaier, P., & Konrad, K. (2019). The tentative governance of emerging science and technology—A conceptual introduction. Research Policy, 48(5), 1091-1097.
Owen, R., Macnaghten, P., & Stilgoe, J. (2012). Responsible research and innovation: From science in society to science for society, with society. Science and public policy, 39(6), 751-760.
Pirnay, F., & Surlemont, B. (2003). Toward a typology of university spin-offs. Small business economics, 21(4), 355-369
Schot, J., & Steinmueller, W. E. (2018). Three frames for innovation policy: R&D, systems of innova
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