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This study addresses the challenge of integrating entrepreneurial competences development into the traditionally structured engineering curriculum, recognizing its potential contribution to job creation. Specifically, this study proposes a course design that intersects project management and entrepreneurial disciplines, adopting a challenge-based learning approach.

Considering a list of common features that entrepreneurs and engineers—in the role of project managers—should excel at, and building upon the principles of experiential learning, this study proposes and describes a course design that is expected to help engineering students develop entrepreneurial competences. Through a series of assessment instruments and descriptive statistics, the study evaluates its implementation in a pilot test applied in a Project Management course at a Spanish university.

The results demonstrate a significant improvement in students' entrepreneurial competences after completing the course. Noteworthy variations in receptiveness to skill development among different personality profiles are observed. Gender differences are minimal, with the exception of women exhibiting heightened self-perception in the autonomy dimension.

This study explores the common features shared by two often-disconnected disciplines, namely engineering and entrepreneurship. It suggests that integrating both perspectives through a challenge-based course design can enhance entrepreneurial competences among engineering students without compromising the specific knowledge gained from engineering programs. Engaging students in such pedagogical experiences not only fosters entrepreneurial competences but also contributes to their professional and personal growth.

Mission statements are a key element of any organization. Ideally, the mission statement should be written at the initial stages of an organization’s life to be a useful tool to guide future organization’s decisions and strategy. However, at the early stages of an organization’s life, the organization might still be under development with the objective and stakeholders not yet well-defined, and therefore, stating the mission so early on, might neglect some important elements. In this paper, the authors explore the difference in mission statement quality between missions that have been created at the birth stage of an organization versus missions that are just explicitly formulated once the organization is already well-established and an underlying implicit mission already exists. The authors use as an empirical setting university research parks.

The authors evaluate mission statement quality using content analysis. The authors then test the differences on mission statement quality between two groups of research parks, those that have followed a creation strategy versus those that have followed a formulation strategy, using mean of differences test.

The authors find that a formulation strategy produces more complete mission statements than the creation strategy. Research parks that have followed a formulation strategy include in their mission statements more references to relevant stakeholders, such as investors, than parks following a creation strategy with respect to their mission statement.

The research setting is Spanish Science Parks. This research setting is appropriate to answer the research question, as two Park creation strategies, planned and unplanned, allow the researchers to clearly differentiate between two mission conception strategies. However, the sample size is rather small.

Research has shown that a well-defined mission helps organizations focus and strategy formulation. The authors’ research offers some guidance on how to achieve a high-quality mission statement which will, in turn, help organizations have a better definition of their purpose.

Research until now has assumed that the mission statement should be formulated at the initial stages of the organization’s life. The authors’ research shows that defining the mission statement later in the process creates higher-quality mission statements that better reflect the organizations purpose and relevant stakeholders.

The purpose of this study is to analyse how different patterns of production factors consumption of Spanish universities lead to specific technology transfer (TT) profiles (outcomes).

Adopting a resource-based view perspective (RBV), qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is used to analyse the relationship between different combinations of resources – human resources, financial resources and support services – and various portfolios of TT outcomes – intellectual or industrial property agreements, spin-offs and TT income.

Results indicate that there is no unique formula of resource consumption that leads to a specific portfolio of TT outcomes. These results seem to reflect the characteristics and competencies added by universities, along with the characteristics of their socioeconomic context. From a RVB perspective, this indicates that the considered resources are substitutable.

The effectiveness of university policies is expected to vary by university, for example depending on the type of resources that is most relevant in the university’s production process. To develop competitive advantages Spanish public universities must resort to internal intangible resources or specific and inimitable combinations of the available resources.

Since Spanish universities are heterogeneous and display different TT portfolios they address the needs of different users.

Previous studies have failed to acknowledge the heterogeneity among universities. To perform the analysis QCA is used, an innovative methodology in the higher education sector that enables us to purposefully acknowledge institutional diversity (in both resources and results). This allows us to indirectly take into account the capabilities of universities using a more holistic approach to evaluate their competitiveness.

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of active teaching methodologies, namely, problem-oriented learning and the case method, to develop sustainability competencies. It also analyses the advantages and challenges for teachers when implementing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in eight undergraduate and postgraduate degrees within the framework of a cross-departmental collaboration.

A mixed research methodology was used: a quantitative study to assess the levels of acquisition of sustainability and research competencies and the potential correlation between them, as well as a mixed study of the advantages and challenges for the teachers participating in the cross-departmental initiative. Curriculum content linked to the SDGs was worked on. Active teaching methodologies and a competency assessment rubric were used as curriculum implementation strategies in the eight courses involved.

Active teaching methodologies are suitable to implement the SDGs in university teaching and to develop both sustainability and research competencies. A synergic effect is observed between them. Coordinated work between teachers of different subjects in several degrees contributes to developing a culture of sustainability at the university.

Although the collaboration between teachers from different disciplines was successful, this study did not promote interdisciplinary projects among students from different degrees. This promises to be highly valuable for future research.

Students can become present and future leaders in achieving the SDGs. This approach can be replicated in other educational institutions.

This study bridges the gap between theoretical recommendations and the practical implementation of the SDGs in undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.

Coordinated work between teachers of different subjects in different degrees contributes to the development of a culture of sustainability at the university.

The paper aims to define a dashboard of indicators to assess the quality performance of higher education institutions (HEI). The instrument is termed SMART-QUAL.

Two sources were used in order to explore potential indicators. In the first step, information disclosed in official websites or institutional documentation of 36 selected HEIs was analyzed. This first step also included in depth structured high managers’ interviews. A total of 223 indicators emerged. In a second step, recent specialized literature was revised searching for indicators, capturing additional 302 indicators.

Each one of the 525 total indicators was classified according to some attributes and distributed into 94 intermediate groups. These groups feed a debugging, prioritization and selection process, which ended up in the SMART-QUAL instrument: a set of 56 key performance indicators, which are grouped in 15 standards, and, in turn, classified into the 3 HEI missions. A basic model and an extended model are also proposed.

The paper provides a useful measure of quality performance of HEIs, showing a holistic view to monitor HEI quality from three fundamental missions. This instrument might assist HEI managers for both assessing and benchmarking purposes. The paper ends with recommendations for university managers and public administration authorities.

The open innovation (OI) paradigm suggests that firms should use inflows and outflows of knowledge in order to accelerate innovation and leverage markets. Literature examining how firms are adopting OI practices is rich; notwithstanding, little research has addressed this topic from the perspective of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Given the relevance of SMEs in worldwide economies, the purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of research on OI in SMEs.

In total, 112 academic articles were selected from the Web of Science database. Following a bibliometric analysis, the most relevant authors, journals, institutions and countries are presented. Additionally, the main areas these articles cover are summarized.

Results are consistent in that the most prolific authors are affiliated with the universities leading the ranking of institutions. However, it is remarkable that top authors in this field do not possess a large number of publications on OI in SMEs, but combine this research topic with other related ones. At the country level, European countries are on the top together with South Korea.

Despite following a rigorous method, other relevant documents not included in the selected databases might have been ignored.

This paper outlines the main topics of interest within this area: impact of OI on firm performance and on organizations’ structure, OI as a mechanism to hasten new product development, the analysis of the inbound/outbound dimensions of OI, and legal issues related to intellectual property right management when OI is implemented.

The study uses a combination of bibliometric indicators with a literature review.

This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature on social enterprises and business model innovation. Particularly, it sheds some light on those factors that turn a social innovation initiative into a success, both in terms of meeting social needs and achieving economic sustainability.

By using a grounded theory approach, an inductive comparative case study is conducted. Two work integration social enterprises in the hospitality and tourism sector are selected. Both companies are located in Barcelona (Spain) under the same legal regulation and economic situation and initially run a manufacturing business. Due to the economic crisis they were forced to reinvent themselves to survive. Data were collected from different sources and coded using content analysis procedures.

Results indicate that three factors, namely, value proposition, appropriate market research and stakeholder involvement, heavily contributed to firm’s success, corroborating previous studies. Furthermore, our study reveals that social need pressures and managerial trust on employees are additional factors that drive social business model innovation.

Changes in the demand, the rules governing the market or economic downturns are external drivers for demand-pull innovations. In such context, firms need to reformulate their business models if they wish to survive. Acknowledging the factors that help firms overcome these obstacles is of great interest for both academics and entrepreneurs.

Social innovation in business models is a topic still poorly defined in the literature, yet, its boundaries to other fields are still fuzzy. This paper aims to fulfill this gap by presenting the theoretical domain in which this topic fits in and evidencing those successful factors that should be considered when designing and implementing a business model innovation which may help other firms facing a similar process.

Business model change (BMC) is a process new ventures are frequently involved in, especially in dynamic environments like the digital industry: copying with it is a key issue for entrepreneurs attempting to shorten the transition between current and new business models (BMs) and avoid losses in terms of revenue, image and customer retention, while acquiring experience and validated learning in the process. The purpose of this paper is to propose a lean framework to support digital new ventures in the BMC process.

The study builds its contribution on two pillars: a review on BM and the lean thinking theories, and a multiple case study on three digital new ventures which underwent BMC.

The study shows how BMC in a digital context can beneficially follow lean principles, and how these principles can be integrated in an original lean framework to experiment on, validate and subsequently change a BM.

The authors provide the “single minute exchange of die” for BMC framework that extends and complements lean startup approaches to further relate lean thinking and BMC, thus operationalizing the process of BM experimenting and validation that enables change.

This study aims to conceptualise the role of knowledge transfer offices (KTOs) as knowledge brokers (KBs) and identify which factors are most significantly related with their performance for supporting public‐private research organizations (PROs), testing the authors' hypothesis for the Spanish case.

An empirical analysis is conducted based on data from RedOTRI 2008 annual report about 63 Spanish KTOs. A multiple lineal regression model is carried on each of the selected variables representative of KTOs' performance (number of priority patents, revenues from industry collaboration and number of spin‐offs) in order to establish possible relationships with some factors related to the knowledge process that characterize KTOs' activity.

A theoretical framework conceptualizing the KTOs' role as knowledge brokers is suggested. Factors positively influencing KTOs' performance are PRO's total annual expenses, the type of PRO, the KTO age, the existence of a science park, the explicit regulation of intellectual property rights, the number of specialized full‐time staff of the KTO and the availability of a patent stock.

The practical implication is the identification of those critical factors for the day‐to‐day operation of Spanish KTOs in their different ways of transferring knowledge, drawing managerial and organisational practices that may improve their performance.

This paper provides two original contributions for literature on knowledge transfer: a theoretical framework for the conceptualisation of KTOs as KBs, and the categorisation and further analysis of factors closely related to the performance of KTOs. A set of managerial implications for a better improvement of such institutions is presented.