A performance-based taxonomy of entrepreneurial universities

Abstract

The European higher education landscape has experienced dramatic changes in the last decades and the entrepreneurial university has turned into a potential solution to these perceived problems. Therefore, this paper proposes taxonomy of entrepreneurial universities. Based on a cluster analysis, three distinct groups are identified, within different phases of the transformation into an entrepreneurial university: one group of universities is in the first phase of the path, since they are not obtaining high entrepreneurial university results yet; another group is in the second phase of the path, obtaining good results in hard academic entrepreneurship activities; and, finally, the last group is composed of the most entrepreneurial universities. Moreover, universities are not motionless within a specific group, they can improve and move from one stage to the upper one; indeed, this paper shows the main levers for moving from one stage to another.