Political and Economic Aspects of Academic and Educational Entrepreneurship

The political and economic aspect is an important dimension of the holistic conceptual framework of academic and educational entrepreneurship, as outlined in Fig. 1 in the chapter “Introduction to Holistic Academic and Educational Entrepreneurship”, given that a state’s political-economic framework is an important determinant of its institutions, which includes universities. The importance of the political economy for academic and educational entrepreneurship has become even more important in the context of the additional role that universities have taken on over the past decades, namely, the so-called “third mission”, with academic entrepreneurship participating in the socio-economic development of the local communities (see, e.g. Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000). Given this additional role, the nature of university–industry relations and knowledge transfer has become an increasingly important strategic issue for university rectors, as well as for politicians and policymakers, both as a source of revenue for universities, and as a policy tool for governments in their economic development policies (Shore & McLauchlan, 2012).