Conceptualization of academic entrepreneurship

Dissemination of knowledge and engage in research were the two most important objectives of the traditional universities across academic and student communities. The other key role a university can play is technology transfer through R&D activities, patenting innovations and assisting students to develop personal and professional skills. Universities extend their support by influencing the innovation process through “scientific publications that expand the technological opportunity set of firms; training of scientists; training of PhDs with its essential provision of background knowledge, skills and personal networks; and participation in common informal networks, joint R&D projects, research funding and contract research with an associated sharing of explicit and tacit knowledge” (Rogers, 1986). Tradition universities can also play a great role in economic development (regional and national). The deep rooted factors that drive the universities towards economic development are emergent role of knowledge in employment and economies, advancement in ICT, increasing significance of high-technology clusters. Therefore, universities form the platform for economic development through knowledge and technology transfer. This initiates the concept of academic entrepreneurship. The concept of “entrepreneurial university” was first coined by Etzkowitz (1998) to site universities those have proven themselves critical to regional economic development. In the recent years, growing interest of universities towards start-up formation with a university-developed technology, initiated entrepreneurship education in large number of higher educational institutions. A straight forward definition of Academic Entrepreneurship is company formation by an academician (e.g. university scientist or a professor, a PhD student, a post-doc researcher) for commercializing their research outputs. This definition combines the classic definition of entrepreneurship with an adjective “academic”, focusing on the fact that entrepreneurship originated from commercialization of the researchers innovation. In recent years, initiatives for technology based economic development has increased rapidly, focusing mainly on inspiring technological entrepreneurship in educational institutions through licensing, patenting, start-up formation, and university–industry partnerships. Grimaldi et al., (2011) referred this as “academic entrepreneurship,” since commercialization of academically developed innovations is one of the objective of such efforts. The term ‘Academic Entrepreneurship’ explains the economic development based on technology initiatives by academic institutions. Academic Entrepreneurship concentrates mainly on innovation commercialization related to universities. Initiations of entrepreneurial activities within the academic institutions are mainly due to accent on technology-transfer to the industry from academics and also to establish a prompt linkage between ‘science, technology and utilization’ (Allen, Tushman & Lee, 1979; Allen 1995; 1997). The positive aspect of academic entrepreneurship is that it generates revenue for academic research, and promotes commercialization of innovations. On the other hand, social viability for preparation of commercialization is questionable (Litan et. al.,2007; Kenny & Patton,2009) which often leads to publication delay, material transfer and agreements of material transfer(Blumenthal et. al.,1997;Louis et.al.,2001;Mowery & Ziedonis, 2007; Walsh et.al., 2007). Academic entrepreneurship can be categorized in five distinct types:

1. 1. Large scale science that includes research funding for large scale projects or laboratories,

2. 2. Supplemental income augmentation which includes practices of both type consulting or Private,

3. 3. University sciences,

4. 4. Patenting of the innovation project or product for its commercial applicability,

5. 5. Direct commercial involvement which involves formation of firms using university facilities and students for its commercialization.

Universities are stimulated by the expectation of economic development and resource generation source, which rapidly escalate their involvement in transfer of technology and commercialization of university research products. Technology Transfer (TT), termed as academic entrepreneurship by many has reflected the process of movement of scientific results from an organization to another for its further development and commercialization (AUTM, 2009). The core of entrepreneurship lies in identifying the hidden opportunities for creation and existence of goods and services. This can be influenced by scientific discoveries. Moreover, knowledge spillover and organizational learning leads to the fact that continuous interaction among the technology creators, appropriators and consumers increases the affluence of knowledge. Therefore, this leads the origination of Technology transfer offices (TTO), business incubators and science parks for facilitating the acceleration of technology spillover and innovation processes. Success of these setups (business incubators and science parks) are determined by their rate of excellence in transferring technology from academic labs to start-up firms with the help of University technology transfer offices (UTTOs) acting as ‘‘technology intermediaries’’ (Markman et. al, 2005). In the past, developing nations had instead of formulating their own customized growth model had put greater emphasis on replicating the models already implemented in developed nations. Some of the nations in the process had emerged successful but many nations failed to emulate the success of developed nations owing to several reasons such as demographic, geographic, cultural and social dissimilarities. For nations like India too, a different model to promote entrepreneurship through creation of an innovation ecosystem should be implemented customized with the needs of the Indian requirements. Emerging nations need not apply the models developed and implemented by developed nations and should instead try to conceptualize their own model which can be customized and adopted by them for their economic growth. The same has been identified with broadly covering

1. 1. Entrepreneurship orientation and awareness programs which focus on general information about entrepreneurship and encourage participants to think in terms of entrepreneurship as a career.

2. 2. New enterprise creation programs designed to develop competences that lead to self-employment, economic self-sufficiency or employment generation.

3. 3. Programs that focus on small business survival and growth.