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The aim of this paper is to conceptualise entrepreneurial capacity-building as an integrated approach within the international higher education sector. Whilst university–enterprise collaboration is recognised as being essential to promoting graduate employability and entrepreneurship, the lack of an integrated approach towards embedding entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial capacity-building with an entrepreneurial skill and mind-set prevails in the higher education sector. With reference to the retail sector, increasingly competitive job markets and the need for entrepreneurial capacity-building place growing pressures on universities to nurture career-ready graduates with entrepreneurial acumen.

The theoretical paper presents a rationale for embedding entrepreneurship education into university curricula and for promoting university–business collaboration. Secondly, it reviews the extent to which entrepreneurial capacity-building is institutionally embedded to foster graduate entrepreneurship, university–business collaboration and business incubation within one strategic framework. Finally, the paper proposes five propositions within a tripartite approach that can foster graduate entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial skills and mind-set, useful for existing enterprises and start-ups. The implications for these propositions are discussed.

The authors propose five propositions with a tripartite approach that can foster graduate entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial skill and mind-set, skills for creating enterprises and university–enterprise collaboration within one strategic framework.

Increasingly competitive job markets and the need for entrepreneurial capacity-building place growing pressures on universities to nurture career-ready graduates with entrepreneurial acumen in social science (e.g. retail, business management and accountancy) and science (e.g. pharmacy, architecture and engineering) programmes centred within the tripartite approach.

Whilst university–enterprise collaboration is recognised as being essential to promoting graduate employability and entrepreneurship, the tripartite integrated approach embeds entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial capacity-building with an entrepreneurial skillset and mind-set in the international higher education sector.

This research investigates the nature of regulatory-focused effectuation (as the basis of entrepreneurial behavior) in absorptive capacity development for open innovation implementation, the role of crowds or communities management practices in the effectuation-based open innovation process, and open innovation performance as the output of the open innovation process in digital multi-sided platform (MSP) startups context.

In order to verify the hypothesis, the researcher conducts a quantitative study that is based on a self-administered questionnaire and employs the PLS-SEM approach. The sample comprises of 70 Indonesian digital MSP businesses that have been operational for at least three years and have used open innovation approaches with their audiences, communities or complementors.

The research findings imply that there is a connection between promotion-focused effectuation and the open innovation process. This connection is particularly strong when it comes to the incorporation of absorptive capacity and crowds or communities management practices. On the other hand, prevention-focused effectuation shows insignificant effect toward open innovation process in digital MSP startups context.

The research findings imply that with limited resources and experiences, young entrepreneurs can still implement open innovation strategy for their digital MSP platform through effectuation principles that leverage the external resources from digital platform ecosystem members.

In digital MSP startups context that perform promotion-based effectuation principles, innovation performance can be achieved by analyzing new insight, transforming the existing activities with the new insight, creating new offering afterward, as well as strengthening crowds or communities management practices through co-creation activities with platform ecosystem members that may lead into new business model.

The originality of this work is to make a contribution to the literature on strategic entrepreneurship by describing the phenomena of the paradox of resource-based theory; adopting open innovation strategy under constrained initial resources and capabilities scenario.