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This paper examines and discusses the need for micro-level analyses of academic entrepreneurship and outlines a micro-level research agenda for the study of academic entrepreneurship.

Based on a review of academic literature on academic entrepreneurship, this study focuses on individual actors and suggests some future research agendas.

The authors highlight that more studies dealing with academic entrepreneurship need to take a micro-level perspective, thereby outline several fruitful avenues of research: (1) star scientists and principal investigators, (2) TTO professionals, (3) graduate entrepreneurs, (4) university administrators, (5) policy makers and funders as well as (6) micro-level organisational routines.

This paper derives three main implications for management practice and policy. First, there is a real need to develop the managerial skills, competencies and capabilities of scientists and individuals. Second, policy makers need to ensure the necessary resources to pursue a paradigm shift towards more entrepreneurial thinking and action and create adequate incentives. Third, firms need to offer support and guidance on how to best commercialise and transfer scientific knowledge and ideally complement support structures of universities and research institutes.

This paper provides an organising framework for the study of micro-level academic entrepreneurship and emphasises the need to focus further on individual actors and how their actions, behaviours and approaches contribute to academic entrepreneurship in different institutional, environmental and cultural contexts.

The purpose of this paper is a micro-level examination of the role and function of cooperative research centers (CRCs) in entrepreneurial universities from a principal investigator (PI) perspective.

This study uses a qualitative research design and is based on 38 semi-structured interviews with PIs who are publicly funded at the Centre for Research in Medical Devices (CÚRAM) based in Ireland. CÚRAM has a multiple mission focus of supporting scientific excellence, industry engagement, educational and public engagement that supports the Irish medical device sector.

The findings reveal that CRCs’ role and function at the micro level constitute a necessary and functional organization architecture that supports PIs who are required to meet multiple scientific, commercialization, educational and public engagement objectives. Specifically, from the micro-level PI perspective, the role and function of CRCs focus on research quality enhancement, brokerage, networks and collaborations, addressing research impact and resource enhancement and appropriation.

This research emphasizes the importance and necessity for the creation of CRCs as part of the entrepreneurial architecture of entrepreneurial universities that provides the necessary appropriate local environmental conditions and enhanced supports to enable micro-level actors to fulfill multiple mission objectives with respect to research excellence, industry, educational and public engagement and impact.

This study contributes to the limited literature on new institutional configurations that support entrepreneurship and addresses recent calls for further research. In taking a micro-level focus, the authors identify the role and function of CRCs from a PI perspective in an entrepreneurial university setting.