Universities and Regional Innovation in the Central- and Eastern European Context—A Hungarian Case

Universities became inevitable actors in regional innovation in the past almost half a century. On the one hand, they are an important source of knowledge that led to success stories both in technological and geographic sense. On the other hand, significant differences have been observed in the capacities and capabilities of universities to transfer their knowledge into wealth generating products and services, and to enhance the advancement of their region. One of the relatively recent policy concepts that strongly relies on universities’ contribution is the regional innovation strategy for smart specialization (RIS3) that aims to spur the development of regions from the highly lagging to the most advanced ones. One of the central elements of the concept is the entrepreneurial discovery process that immanently necessitates the presence of an entrepreneurial mindset and culture in the region. Consequently, in our view one of the most important of the many contributions of universities to the design and implementation of RIS3 is the creation of an entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports entrepreneurial thinking and acting within the region. In this chapter, we applied the university centered entrepreneurial ecosystem approach for a large, comprehensive university in a lagging region to analyze the role that the university can play in smart specialization by developing an entrepreneurial mindset and ecosystem. We found that the elements of the puzzle are on the table, but owing to the insufficient connection of the elements there is a suboptimal outcome of the ecosystem. Areas for improvement are also addressed.