Maribel Guerrero

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Ecosystem’s Drivers: The Role of Higher Education Organizations

Extant empirical entrepreneurship studies recognize that the main challenge of emerging economies is transforming into entrepreneurial societies. Following this perspective, the involvement of several actors (government, universities, entrepreneurs, investors, etc.) is required in this evolutionary process. In this regard, emerging economies’ governments promote the configuration of entrepreneurial ecosystems to achieve this transformation. Even in previous insights, the role of each actor is an interesting attention for academics and policy makers. In this sense, this chapter tries to provide a better understanding about the role of higher education organizations as driver of entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems in Mexico. Our analysis provides evidence about the relevance of incentives in configuration of triple mission of Mexican higher education organizations as well as their lower participation in the involvement of innovation and entrepreneurial activities.

Economic recession shake-out and entrepreneurship: Evidence from Spain

This article aims to gain a better understanding of the relationship between economic recession and entrepreneurship. The process of entrepreneurship, rather than the action itself, is a complex phenomenon, and such complexity surfaces when local context conditions worsen after an economic recession. This paper addresses the issue of how the likelihood of individuals to engage in the creation of new firms is affected by a recessionary climate. Furthermore, the study focuses on how the recession-driven shake-out effect varies across local contexts (i.e., sub-national regions). The case of Spain in the critical period of 2007–2010 is examined by using multilevel logistic mediation models on individual-level and sub-national region-level panel data. The results show that entrepreneurship shrinks during economic downturns, suggesting a pro-cyclical trend. A weaker perception by individuals of business opportunities resulting from the shake-out explains, to a large extent, the lower propensity to create firms during economic recession.

The Nexus of Ecosystems, Strategic Orientations, and Higher Education With Technology-Based Nascent Entrepreneurship

Technology based nascent entrepreneurship literature is seeking to analyze/conceptualize individual-organizational level nexus in order to understand the organizational context within which technology entrepreneurship is enabled or constrained as well as highlighting how different organizational arrangements can therefore be valid for different external conditions and enhanced the effectiveness in their interaction. Based on those perspectives, the main purpose of this chapter is to provide a better understanding about the nexus of ecosystems, strategic orientations, and higher education on technology based nascent entrepreneurship. Particularly, how certain environmental conditions, organizational orientations and education could influence in the development of new technologies by nascent entrepreneurs. Adopting several theoretical bases, we proposed a conceptual model that helps us to understand the nexus among those different levels of analysis. In addition, this model was tested using the 2008 GEM datasets and adopting a multilevel analysis.

The Transformative Role of Universities: Determinants, Impacts, and Challenges

Traditionally, the core activity of universities has been universally recognized as teaching but universities have undergone internal transformations in order to adapt to external conditions and to legitimize their role in the society. Nowadays, the role of the university is considerably broader than simply to generate graduates, knowledge, and technology transfer. It is more fundamental to ensure that people thrive (creating entrepreneurial thinking, leadership, and action) and in the long term contribute into the key production factors associated to social and economic development. The main objective of this chapter is to provide a better understanding of the main determinants, impacts, and challenges behind the transformative role of universities to become more innovative and entrepreneurial.

Interconnectivity between academic organizations and established firms for a strategic and knowledge fostering purpose: an exploratory study in an emerging economy

The literature has traditionally explained the main reasons behind the development of innovation practices in enterprises as motivated by potential outcomes in terms of innovation performance (Hagedoorn, 1993), technological evolution (Rosenkopf and Nerkar, 2001), product introduction (Laursen and Salter, 2006), and the types of collaborations they engage in (Tsai and Wang, 2009).

The Role of Employee’s Human Capital and the Work Environment on the Creation of Organizational Spin-Offs: Evidence from Spain

Previous studies have recognized the relevance of certain individual (generic and specific human capital) and organizational (work environment) factors in the creation of new ventures from and for an existing organization. The objective of this exploratory study is to understand the roles of employee human capital and the work environment on the creation of organizational spin-offs. Adopting the human capital and the corporate entrepreneurship approaches, a conceptual framework was proposed and tested with data from the 2012 Spanish Adult Population Survey (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, GEM). Due to the nature of the data and research objective, a rare event model was used for the analysis. Our results provide evidence about the relevant roles of specific human capital (entrepreneurship educational training) and the work environment (job autonomy) on the propensity that an employee becomes an intrapreneur and leads a spin-off “from” and “for” their employer. We also show that a stronger moderation effect of job autonomy takes place in the relationship between entrepreneurship education and organizational spin-off creation. In general, these results would help employees, top managers, and policy makers take into account the relevance of these individual and organizational factors when defining their strategic decisions/planning.