Mary Lindenstein Walshok

Beyond Tech Transfer: A More Comprehensive Approach to Measuring the Entrepreneurial University

Since the 1980s, US universities have greatly increased attention given to innovation and entrepreneurship out of a genuine commitment to enhancing American competitiveness. Although regional innovation and entrepreneurship can be enhanced by universities in multiple ways, the primary metrics of “success” remain patenting, licensing rates, and university spin-outs. While these metrics can be a useful proxy for the entrepreneurial university they tend to understate the many important contributions universities, including non-research intensive universities, make to their regional economies. In this chapter, we introduce a framework of capabilities that are essential to nurturing ecosystems of innovation and entrepreneurship at the regional level. We then describe the varied ways in which universities can support the development of these capabilities. Finally, we provide a framework of metrics, which can more comprehensively capture the value that universities represent to innovation and entrepreneurship in their regions.

A Systemic Approach to Accelerating Entrepreneurship

when the passage of the Bayh/Dole Act, which allowed research institutions to license inventions coming out of federally funded grants, and the creation of the Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) program helped unleash an unprecedented era of innovation and entrepreneurship across the country. It is clear that the larger environment in which entrepreneurial enterprises emerge is critically important to the incubation, growth, and sustainability of wealthand job-creating companies. We have a long history in this country of celebrating heroes, pioneers, and individual entrepreneurs, based on our deep belief in the power of the individual over his or her environment. However, increasing evidence suggests that environment, timing, and support can either enable or inhibit individual achievements, including successful entrepreneurship. The 21-century environment for innovation and entrepreneurship has become globally interdependent in terms of inventions, innovations, markets, production, and talent. Discretionary resources are dispersed, rather than being concentrated in the hands of a few individuals or companies. Thus, many of the policies and practices vis-a-vis incentivizing and accelerating entrepreneurship in the 1980s may be insufficient for the challenges of the 21 century. It may be time to rethink what it takes to accelerate innovation and entrepreneurship in a global knowledge economy. My experience working in a community that completely reinvented itself over a 30-year period suggests that accelerating entrepreneurship is as much about community transformation as it is about helping individual entrepreneurs. Enhancing community capacity as it simultaneously supported entrepreneurs was at the core of San Diego’s strategy, especially the University of California, San Diego’s innovative CONNECT organization, which was created to be a catalyst for technology entrepreneurship. Started in 1984, just as the larger environment that enabled more localized innovation and entrepreneurship was unleashed by less restrictive intellectual property and financial policies, CONNECT began with an

Creating competitiveness: introduction and overview

Competitiveness is a concept that is most readily identified with firms and organizations. A competitive firm can enjoy sustained levels of high profitability. By contrast, a paucity of competitiveness may doom a firm to eroding rates of return and, ultimately, bankruptcy or insolvency. It is not surprising that an entire scholarly discipline within the field of management has devoted itself to understanding what firms and organizations can do to improve their competitiveness, and ultimately their performance. However, firms are not the only organizational body whose performance is dependent upon being competitive. The varied economic performance of cities and regions, both within a single nation, as well as across nations, during the era of the Great Recession also highlights the need for competitiveness. Those cities and regions that are more competitive enjoy a superior economic performance, while their less competitive counterparts suffer from lower rates of economic growth and increasing levels of unemployment. During the massive economic expansion of the 1990s, there was a sense that ‘all boats are lifted by a rising tide.’ As long as the overall economy grew so impressively, most cities, states and regions were also able to enjoy an improving economic performance. However, with the stagnant macroeconomic environment that emerged at the beginning of this century, the disparities in economic performance across regions and cities have increased. This is true not only in the North American context but also in Europe and the rest of the developed world. In particular, the current crisis in Europe is essentially a competitiveness crisis for many cities and regions, particularly in southern and Mediterranean Europe. Prior to the introduction of the single currency, the Euro, those places could maintain their competitiveness and employment levels through a devaluating currency. But with the disappearance of currency devaluation as an instrument to enhance competitiveness, these