Academic entrepreneurship promotion and support activities the Portuguese Experience

• Autor(a) principal: Caiado, Maria João Minhota Antunes
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/4001
• topic: Entrepreneurship; Universities; Education; Knowledge and technology transfer; Empreendedorismo; Educação; Universidades; Tranferência tecnológica

Entrepreneurship has been gaining a growing interest in all societies. With the new economic context, the small and innovative, fast growing firms are seen as the base of future economic growth. Individuals are expected to acquire the capacities to evolve in this new society, and therefore educational institutions have been suffering a growing pressure by governments and stakeholders, to raise entrepreneurial citizens. Universities in particular are in a prominent position, because of their core missions of teaching and researching. They can educate citizens for entrepreneurship, and they can exploit their research results and transfer them to the market, creating firms or collaborating with existing ones, which will contribute to innovation and lasting economic growth. Universities have to embrace a new mission, committing themselves to act in benefit of societal development. Academic entrepreneurship is the universities third mission’s achievement. In this study, we have analyzed the situation of Portuguese universities in embracing entrepreneurship, promoting it within their community, fostering and supporting its development. 14 Portuguese public universities were studied, according to their organization, entrepreneurship support structures, and educational curricula. If it became evident that all universities were implementing entrepreneurship in their curricula, it was also clear that it is still very limited, and entrepreneurship is far from being taught to every student. Regarding knowledge and technology transfer support, there again all universities are participating, but despite some good examples of multiple support structures, in some universities there is still a lack of investment, preventing entrepreneurship full dissemination and valorization.