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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of universities in fostering and promoting entrepreneurship in Finland. In particular it seeks to examine the university‐entrepreneurship relationship: its nature and how universities are addressing the entrepreneurship agenda.

The paper is based on a large study of Finnish universities and their relation to entrepreneurship, its promotion and incorporating university‐based enterprise education. The study was a one‐year‐project carried out in 2004 and funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education. The empirical data were collected in March‐August 2004 via an internet survey and by conducting interviews in all of the 21 Finnish universities.

The study shows that within all Finnish universities there are as yet untapped resources and opportunities in terms of entrepreneurship. However it is far from clear if there is one model which will increasingly drive entrepreneurial development within Finnish universities or whether a more ad hoc and somewhat ambiguous conceptual understanding will characterise developments.

The paper provides useful information on entrepreneurship in Finnish universities.

Interest in academic entrepreneurship is gaining attention as pressure on academic institutions to be more entrepreneurial increases. To date, emphasis has been on the transfer and commercialisation of research with little discussion focused on the entrepreneurial potential of university teaching. Drawing on Schumpeter’s theory of entrepreneurship, in particular the combining and recombining of resources and the concept of resistance, we provide an illustrative case study of one entrepreneurial academic venture that emerged from the teaching activities of a university. We examine how this venture, the ICEHOUSE, has evolved and been sustained despite pressure from competing logics from its partnering institutions. We argue that multiple and competing logics by various stakeholder groups led to ‘resistive tension’ which has supported the growth of the organisation.

At its essence, entrepreneurship has the potential to empower and to transform. The key to both individual and organizational prosperity in a dynamic, threatening and complex world is the ability to think and act in more entrepreneurial ways. A new wave of economic development is sweeping the world, with entrepreneurship and innovation as the primary catalysts. Within the world of education, it can be argued that the at-risk student is the one not prepared for this entrepreneurial age. While every student has the potential, most lack the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and capabilities that define entrepreneurial competence. Over these past four decades, entrepreneurship has grown within universities faster than virtually any other area of intellectual pursuit. And it appears that the pace is accelerating with more universities seeking to develop programs and centers focused on entrepreneurship. Yet, understanding how to build entrepreneurship programs that empower and transform has remained challenging for some institutions. In this chapter, we investigate the development of entrepreneurship programs in universities. More specifically we contend that they should be created for empowerment and transformation across the campus. We describe some of the most common structural forms, outline the different degree programs, and emphasize the empowering and transforming effects of these programs for all the stakeholders of a university.

In 2004 and 2007, the Kauffman Foundation awarded 18 universities and colleges $3–5 million dollars each to develop radiant model entrepreneurship education programs and campus-wide entrepreneurial ecosystems. Grant recipients were required to have a senior level administrator to oversee the program who reported to the Provost, President, or Chancellor. Award recipients included Syracuse University (2007) and the University of Rochester (2004). Cornell was not a Kauffman campus. This chapter explores three case studies in the radiant model of university-wide entrepreneurship education as deployed at Cornell University, The University of Rochester, and Syracuse University. The authors examine the history, accelerators, and challenges of the radiant model of university-wide entrepreneurship education.

In this chapter the authors explore some drivers of entrepreneurial intentions using the theory of planned behaviour on a sample of Italian students. Our objective is twofold. First, the study investigates if both perceiving that becoming an entrepreneur is risky and having non-financial career motivations affect university students’ entrepreneurial intentions. Second, it investigates if students’ perception that university education has an effect on their entrepreneurial skills and attitudes and their perception that the university favours and supports entrepreneurship moderate the relationship between cognitive antecedents of intentions (i.e. attitudes, norms and control) and entrepreneurial intentions. This chapter presents an analysis of a sample of more than 1,500 students from the University of Padova (Italy). According to the national ranking, this University – which is one of Italy’s oldest and largest universities – has been classified as the one with the best Faculty of Economics and Statistics in terms of teaching for more than 10 years among 45 Italian public universities. Data from the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students’ Survey (GUESSS) carried out in 2013 was used. Our analysis highlights not only on the importance of individual characteristics, but also on the role of the learning experience students have during their university studies. This means that it is important to consider how much students perceive that their university education has an effect on entrepreneurial skills and attitudes.

Universities are increasingly looking at entrepreneurship as a way to bridge theory and practice. This is important in these challenging times when unexpected events and occurrences take place. It is becoming more important for universities to respond in an entrepreneurial manner to new trends to capitalise on learning and research opportunities. The aim of this chapter is to discuss how universities are acting in an entrepreneurial way by responding to educational and social challenges. This will help to understand fruitful new areas of teaching, research, service and engagement that can occur in a university setting based on entrepreneurial thinking.

Entrepreneurship in most cases can provide new products and services to the market and play an active role in an industry. Nowadays, colleges entrepreneurship education is becoming more of a “business incubator” for future entrepreneurship. This paper reviews the relative literature with entrepreneurship education in China and USA's colleges, aims to identify Chinese colleges' issues, then develops suggestions of Chinese colleges' entrepreneurship education and illustrated its future trends.

It revealed the theoretical framework of American main entrepreneurship education modes, analyzing three representative entrepreneurship modes in American colleges, its spirit, capability of innovation, entrepreneurship ability contribute to the basic frame of entrepreneurship education in American colleges, then by comparative research between American and Chinese colleges.

This paper is based on discussing the differences between US and Chinese colleges with entrepreneurship education as well as the enlightenment. Meanwhile, it was pointed out the disadvantages relating to our colleges' entrepreneurship education and its future trends.

By introducing the entrepreneurship modes of US colleges and analyzing the modes together with Chinese colleges entrepreneurship education, it draws out the conclusion to carry out practical activities and establish a good entrepreneurship environment, to strengthen teacher training in entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial consultant team building and to deploy entrepreneurship research.

This paper aims to analyze the link between universities and business incubators (BIs) and to determine how students, scientific researchers and entrepreneurs can benefit from this linkage. It creates an environment in which everyone can help the other to put their new ideas, special skills and abilities into new businesses. In other words, the traditional universities’ role has changed and entrepreneurial universities are now needed to redirect new knowledge for economic development through BIs.

This paper adopts an analytical descriptive methodology approach to describe the basic features of the data by using the descriptive research design. This research is based on examining a model provided by the author concerning boosting the entrepreneurial aspects and outcomes through university business incubators (UBIs) based on wide theoretical and empirical case studies. Also, the functional structural approach is used to investigate the relationship between two variables as UBIs are considered a new unit that has functions and structures to create an added value to universities and the society as a whole.

The educational system should create a favorable environment that enables young people to develop their mindset from employees to employers, and to prepare them to improve skills and knowledge to create jobs. UBI is the recent aspect of the BI evolution where the research outcomes are linked with the industry and development. This relationship between these entities will provide success to its stakeholders.

Many incubators around the world are supported by universities. Others are making initiatives to link up with universities and higher education institutions to get the revenues and returns from its academic nature. Lately, university incubators became a type of incubator evolution and more supportive for entrepreneurs than other types of incubators.

The contribution of this study is to explain how UBIs succeeded to tie the results of scientific research with economy and development through entrepreneurial activities to accelerate and realize entrepreneurship strategies.

This paper aims to explore the impact mechanism of Chinese university students’ perceived entrepreneurial environment on their entrepreneurial tendency in the context of Chinese economic transition. In particular, the paper provides a reference for relevant departments to make policies and entrepreneurship educators to perfect the pedagogical design and curriculum development in entrepreneurship education programs.

The authors used questionnaires to collect data in Chinese universities via random sampling, and gained 729 valid questionnaires. Results from principal component analysis indicate that the scales have a good reliability. In particular, entrepreneurial attitude had three components. The hypotheses are tested by using Spearman correlation and multiple linear regression; the level of statistical significance of F-test was less than 0.05. Hence, multiple linear regression can be used in the analyses.

The study found that university students’ perceived social environment and economic environment have a positive influence on their entrepreneurial tendency, and entrepreneurial attitude is partially playing a mediating role between students’ perceived entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurial tendency. However, students’ perceived policy environment has no significant impact on entrepreneurial tendency.

Environmental factors are often viewed as“gap fillers” in related studies, and mostly concentrated in the Western developed countries. This study attempts to fill the gaps in the context of Chinese economic transition.

The university is an institution with a long history and, over the course of the centuries, it has gone through several stages in its development. While initially conceived as an institution with a teaching “mission,” the university later adopted a knowledge generation function (research). In recent years, the idea has emerged that the university is assuming a “third mission”: contributing to society and economic development more directly; turning the university into an Entrepreneurial University. What, however, constitutes this Entrepreneurial University? Are all Entrepreneurial Universities composed of the same factors? The purpose of this paper is to answer these significant questions, through an empirical analysis performed on a sample of 59 Northern and Southern European universities.

Empirical analysis performed on a sample of 59 Northern and Southern European universities.

The findings show that students’ spin-off firm formation is the only different result for an Entrepreneurial University between Northern and Southern European universities and that the core internal entrepreneurship support factors are different for both geographical locations.

Besides, regarding external entrepreneurship support factors, results show that a supportive institutional context is a core element for promoting internal entrepreneurship support factors and in turn for increasing students’ spin-off firm formation in both Northern and Southern universities.