Making universities more entrepreneurial: Development of a model

Entrepreneurial universities where multifaceted efforts are made to ensure their contribution to regional economic development have been the focus of many case studies. Using institutional economics as the theoretical framework, we conducted two empirical investigations to advance the literature concerning entrepreneurial universities. First, experts in the field evaluated the appropriateness of several competing definitions of the entrepreneurial university. They also rated facilitators and barriers to universities becoming more entrepreneurial and suggested criteria for evaluating the success of such efforts. Second, the facilitators and barriers previously identified were examined for their relationship to the entrepreneurial success criteria using ratings from the faculty at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). Although the facilitating factors were positively associated with success indices of the entrepreneurial university, the expected negative relationship between the barriers and success criteria was not observed.