Entrepreneurial University Business Models: Core Drivers, Challenges and Consequences

The mission of universities is evolving, where their remit is no longer to only educate and provide high quality research. They now need to embrace knowledge and technology transfer to increase the economic, societal and public impact they have on a region. This has required universities to become entrepreneurial as organizations. To be entrepreneurial requires changes to the underlying value propositions, value creation and value capture activities of a university, which comprises of their business model. Research on university business models is in its infancy, where little is known on the design of entrepreneurial university business models. The purpose of this chapter is to identify some core drivers for change facing universities and unravel the challenges and consequences which will have implications for the entrepreneurial university business model. Through this, we present a research agenda to further advance both theory and practice on entrepreneurial university business models.