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Despite growing scholarly interest in academic entrepreneurship (AE) few studies have examined its non-commercial aspects and how it contributes to meeting grand societal challenges. One explanation for this may be the continuing focus of AE on intellectual property commercialization. This paper aims to address this knowledge gap by uncovering how universities can contribute to promoting non-commercial forms of AE.

This paper uses the human capital theoretical lens to make its argument and applies it to data obtained from exploratory qualitative research (55 semi-structured interviews and nine focus groups) in the developing countries of Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador.

Universities can promote different forms of non-commercial AE even in the absence of sophisticated resources for innovation, through the stimulation of the specific human capital of the university community resulting from activities where they help others.

This paper proposes a general framework for advancing theory development in AE and its non-commercial forms, based on data obtained in uncharted territories for AE.