Abstract
Public policies focusing on the higher education landscape often pursue a paradigm shift among universities that may ultimately lead to the transformation towards entrepreneurial universities. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether a higher education policy-induced transformation significantly influenced regional high-technology entrepreneurship. We thereby focus on the German Excellence Initiative, a higher education policy intervention designed to foster and support the transformative change of German universities towards an entrepreneurial paradigm. Our results reveal that the German Excellence Initiative had a positive and significant impact on regional high-technology entrepreneurship. Our results further show that the higher the interaction with industry, the more conducive universities become for regional high-technology entrepreneurship. In addition, universities’ overarching scientific focus decisively affects regional high-technology entrepreneurship. Based on our results, we conclude our paper by outlining implications for policy makers, high-technology entrepreneurs and university managers as well as present future avenues for research.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 343-364 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| Journal | Industry and Innovation |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 13 May 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 16 Mar 2021 |
Keywords
- entrepreneurial universities
- Entrepreneurship
- excellence initiative
- Germany
- high-technology entrepreneurship
- start-ups
- entrepreneurial ecosystems
- Entrepreneurial ecosystems