Alice in Entrepreneurs' Land: The University Challenge

Abstract

In the context of the Entrepreneurial Universities and university third mission we want to examine to what extent university business support activities are becoming part of the day by day of the university as part of their current financial sources or is just a fashionable activity and the university will finally react against them due to cultural, managerial and organisational manners anchored in different principles to those required to turn a university into an entrepreneurial organisation. We analyse the case of the IDEAS Programme at the Polytechnic University of Valencia as a paradigmatic case in Spain and conclude that the process is imposing changes in several university structures that so far have been welcomed and are transforming the institution into a systemic organisation, linking the different activities related to business support at the university. The key result is represented by an increasing evolution in the number of university spin-off and business created with three key periods of time reflecting strategy changes.