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This paper aims to explore the potential agency of university-based social entrepreneurship ecosystems (U-BSEEs) from a political ecology perspective. It addresses how higher education institutions can leverage their embedded role within a community to foster social entrepreneurship, by leveraging adult learning theories of andragogy and heutagogy in (social) entrepreneurship education.

This empirical study interviewed ten senior-level academics in the USA, the UK, Ireland and Australia with practical experience in the (social) entrepreneurship and social innovation space. Qualitative methods of structured interviews, coding and analysis were used as an appropriate procedure to examine the political ecology of U-BSEEs and the interconnectedness of its actors.

Key findings included criticisms of higher educations’ role in society; financial resources and university impact on stakeholders; the potential of student-based initiatives and programs leveraging andragogy and ideally heutagogy adult learning theories; and changes universities could implement to become key actors of U-BSEEs. Student engagement and cross-disciplinary work is apparently the modus operandi to successful university based ecosystem development.

Research limitations included sample size and lack of junior and mid-level academic perspectives; surveys could be conducted in future research on the topic to generate quantitative data to strengthen findings. Implications of the research suggest that universities possess the necessary resources and personnel to serve as keystone actors of an ecosystem, but currently do not leverage the expertise available to them.

All respondents concurred that focusing on students as change agents, and building social entrepreneurship education programs could foster a trophic cascade of increased collaboration, economic growth, political capital and social good in the local and regional ecosystem.

This study is original in its attempt to build on the entrepreneurship ecosystem literature by considering the agency of U-BSEEs from a political ecology lens.

The purpose of this study is to answer the following questions. What kind of entrepreneurial identities do students have that motivate them to choose either of the entrepreneurship course and university-based incubator? How do students involve in the entrepreneurship ecosystem at university based on their entrepreneurial identity?

For this study, the author began to gather information using previous knowledge and any aspect of a work, namely, from the literature review to represent interpretive syntheses of the meaning-making literature review addressing the research question.

This study suggests what happens to entrepreneur students from academia and the reason that they end up in one of the two aforementioned paradigms. This paper aims to underpin the issue of how various entrepreneurial identities of students cause substantial contributing factors in forming such entrepreneurial activities at university and throughout the entire innovation ecosystem.

Almost all of the content of the entrepreneurship education (EE) courses and incubator training is oriented towards consensual entrepreneurship methods, in accordance with entrepreneurship education. Although the core contents of the EE courses and university-based incubators’ training are the same, the outcomes are quite different.

This study considers the students’ entrepreneurial identities with a focus on their point of view that led them to end up in one of the two common entrepreneurship resources at universities: the EE course and entrepreneurial activities related to university-based incubators.

This chapter explores the concept of an entrepreneurship education ecosystem. The concept of ecosystem comes from the natural sciences, but is increasingly applied to regional development, or clusters, which focus on firm inter-organizational relationships. Building on the idea of the university is a key player in a local entrepreneurship ecosystem, this chapter provides a framework for examining a school’s role in this process. A typology is presented that articulates roles that schools may pursue in developing their own internal entrepreneurship education ecosystem.

This paper describes the entrepreneurial ecosystems of three public research universities involved in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Midwest I-Corps TM (trademark symbol) Node. It presents a synthesis of programming, functional structure, commonly referenced university metrics and their limitations in measuring impact on commercialization and regional development.

Based on current literature, university data and discussions with entrepreneurship leaders at the University of Michigan/Ann Arbor, University of Illinois/Urbana Champaign and Purdue University, this paper provides an overview and analysis of entrepreneurial resources and education initiatives.

University contributions to entrepreneurial ecosystems can be described with respect to infrastructure and leadership, technology and talent and culture of innovation. Four main university entities are responsible for driving entrepreneurship initiatives. Identification of these entities, their respective activities and their outcomes allows us to propose a framework for analyzing and measuring university entrepreneurial ecosystem impact.

The paper describes the variety of university-based entrepreneurial initiatives believed to contribute to university entrepreneurial vibrancy and ultimately regional development. It identifies ecosystem stakeholders and provides a framework for examining their role and impact for continuous development.

The research complements prior reviews and empirical studies of university-wide entrepreneurial ecosystems by focusing on programming within and across institutions according to four dimensions (academic, research administration, technology transfer and community engagement) with respect to technology and talent development. It describes similarities across institutions and limitations associated with measuring impact. It provides a foundation for future empirical research related to the impact of NSF I-Corps and entrepreneurial programming in academic settings.

The creation of start-ups using knowledge provided by universities has been identified as an important source of knowledge spillover and regional economic development. Entrepreneurship ecosystems in education have become the most important and efficient mechanism of business community engagement and knowledge transfer within university-industry-government framework creating value to society and regional economy. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study undertakes in-depth synthesis of eclectic literature on entrepreneurship ecosystems and knowledge spillover of entrepreneurship, examining the critical success factors and enablers of entrepreneurship ecosystems in education.

This study proposes entrepreneurship education ecosystems as an alternative unit of analysis when it comes to considering the role of university-industry-government collaboration in knowledge commercialization. The authors recommend key entrepreneurship education ecosystem enablers for knowledge commercialization and engagement with entrepreneurial communities.

The authors propose a framework for the creation of an entrepreneurship education ecosystem as a unit of analysis when considering the role of university-industry-government collaboration. It requires different approaches to teaching, research and business outreach, some of which have not yet been discovered or yet need to be created.

Innovation ecosystems face many environmental challenges. The literature review shows that innovation ecosystems accelerate innovation activity, but empirical studies have not provided enough case studies focusing on the minimum-waste business strategy as one aspect of the circular economy. Various forms of interaction between members occur in the innovation ecosystems, which determines the level of cooperation. This paper aims to show the structure and forms of cooperation in an innovation ecosystem using the Czech Hemp Cluster (CHC) and its surroundings and suggest research directions in the field of interaction between members in an innovation ecosystem. Although hemp is associated with the production and distribution of narcotics, it is a versatile plant supporting the minimum-waste business strategy.

The research is based on a theoretical part of a literature review of major scientific articles on innovation ecosystems from 2016 to 2021. The case study of the CHC and the hemp ecosystem is based on qualitative research in the form of a content analysis of the mission of the cluster members. In addition to content analysis, the classic multidimensional scaling method and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to reveal ecological guilds.

The case study highlighted the specific relationship between the cluster and the ecosystem. The cluster does not determine the ecosystem boundaries, but the ecosystem is a much broader system of cooperation and interaction between organisations. Clusters emerge after an ecosystem has existed for a particular time to coordinate collaboration and information between organisations and stakeholders. The analysis of the CHC revealed the specific role of non-profit organisations (NPOs) in the innovation ecosystem. NPOs are not engaged in primary functions in the value chain, but they provide supporting activities through coordinated networking, disseminating information on innovation, awareness-raising and stakeholder education. Compared to natural ecosystems, innovation ecosystems are typically characterised by higher forms of collaboration between members.

An exciting opportunity for research on innovation ecosystems is the ecological guilds taken from natural ecosystems and whose identification can help define the boundaries of innovation ecosystems. An opportunity for further research is the comparison of NPO-based and government-based clusters playing a central role in developing innovation ecosystems. Regarding the problematic generalisability of the case study to the entire agricultural production, a challenge is a search for minimum-waste business models in agriculture characterised by the biological nature of production.

Theoretical and empirical studies have not yet considered innovation ecosystems in the minimum-waste context to a sufficient extent. The paper builds on previous scholarly studies focusing on innovation ecosystems and, for the first time, discusses the role of NPOs in the innovation ecosystem. The CHC case study adds a suitable minimum-waste business model to the still very scarce literature on sustainable innovation ecosystems. The article discusses the purpose and forms of cooperation in an innovation ecosystem, identifies a complementarity of roles in the innovation cluster and describes the interrelationship between the cluster and the ecosystem. Discussion of the ecosystem leader in the cluster-based innovation ecosystem shows the differences between Czech, Polish and German life science ecosystems.

This chapter begins with a reflection on the call for investigating how entrepreneurial competencies are developed (Bird, 1995) in the context of university-based entrepreneurship centers. Through clarifying the nature of entrepreneurial competencies and applying a social constructivist perspective of learning, it is proposed that effective nurturing of entrepreneurial competencies for university students through entrepreneurship centers shall be based on five key characteristics; namely, active experimentation, authenticity, social interaction, sense of ownership, and scaffolding support. The chapter contributes to the literature through establishing a link between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial competencies in the context of university-based entrepreneurship centers, which have become an increasingly popular way for promoting entrepreneurial development. The practical implications on nurturing entrepreneurs through entrepreneurship centers are discussed, together with the directions for further research. This chapter is designed as a refection upon Bird’s original article articulating the concept of entrepreneurial competencies. In this chapter, the author outlines how entrepreneurial competencies can be developed through education programs, specifically via entrepreneurship centers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the status of university accelerators (UAs) in Australia, expanding a similar paper on related entrepreneurship education (EE) in 2019. The aim is to review neoteric global best practice UA, aligning context and specific inference to the impact of UAs in Australia.

The authors introduce an iterative and emergent inquiry into multi-method research, including a quantitative examination of Australian UAs, Leximancer algorithmic analyses of entrepreneurial strategic intent and narratives from best practice applications.

The paper highlights the sparse and inconsistent distribution across UAs in Australia, further characterized by significant symbolic motives of operation. Furthermore, the integration of EE evidenced on global UA is not as evident in Australia, highlighting outcomes more specific to the success of nascent (student) startups as opposed to educational outcomes.

Limitations include the availability and accuracy of online documents and data, although implications have been mitigated using multi-method research design.

Despite the provision of critical grounding for practitioners and researchers in developing UAs, further research is recommended regarding the efficacy and impact of these accelerators.

This study is the first multi-methods emergent inquiry into UAs in Australia, coupled with integration of EE. The authors provide guidelines and inferences for researchers, educators, policymakers and practitioners alike as they seek to explore and act upon the impact of UAs.

For entrepreneurship education issue, the purpose of this paper is to apply a novel four-step method of comparative education research and assessment items for university-based entrepreneurship ecosystems (U-BEEs), with a specific focus on universities in Taiwan and Singapore. In this paper, entrepreneurship education development is explored, and important implications for the further improvement of entrepreneurship education are provided.

This study is based on the comparative education research method and proceeds in four steps (i.e. description, interpretation, juxtaposition, and comparison). The U-BEE items are applied to exemplify the similarities and differences of the process by which entrepreneurship education developed in two universities each in Singapore (National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University) and Taiwan (National Taiwan University and National Tsing Hua University).

From the country-based standpoint, the findings include considering broader factors (i.e. history, education) in such a comparison of the similarities and differences among four universities, reflecting the reality in the Asian region and introducing the method application of comparative education research for the first time in entrepreneurship education. From holistic and specific perspectives of U-BEE, the findings consist of presenting similarities and differences based on the comparisons of each item and showing the classified findings.

This study provides helpful insights based on the perspectives of academics and practitioners. First, the authors urge the necessity of the theoretical base of teaching and learning in education when universities plan for entrepreneurship education. Second, the authors stress the critical impact of the government on the execution of entrepreneurship education in the higher education context.

This research aims to shed new lights on the most shared constructs developed on Innovation Ecosystems, Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Technology Transfer Ecosystem proposing an additional stand-alone ecosystem.

This research is built upon a qual-quantitative analysis of an empirical case. The latter analysis is performed through a single case study methodology on the San Giovanni Hub of the Federico II University of Naples.

Evidences show how a technological hub orchestrates three main ecosystems for the knowledge exploitation: the technology transfer ecosystem, devoted to gather knowledge form universities' labs towards industries; the innovation ecosystem, able to manage the exploration and exploitation of new knowledge and techniques; the entrepreneurial ecosystem, that supports startup/spinoff creation process.

Limitations mainly concern the fact that it is centred on just one case study.

Practical implications imply new opportunities of collaboration involving different stakeholders as university administrators, researchers, businesses and policymakers, creating a supportive environment for innovation.

The research offers a new vision about the role of Universities as creators and enablers of ecosystems pursuing diverse value propositions. The Academic Innovation Ecosystem is a new conceptualization of this role played by a university, and it can convey innovation and entrepreneurial attitude within its ecosystem leveraging on the transfer of university knowledge and technology.