Ongoing Projects

Strategy and structure of entrepreneurial universities in the Nordic countries

Projectleader: Lars Bengtsson

The external pressures on universities to become more flexible, adaptive and responsive to the needs of the society have been strong the last two decades. New national policies, legal frameworks and financial means have been introduced to enable the development of a more responsive university. The transformation of universities to become more proactive and entrepreneurial together with the development of a third role, besides research and education, for universities making them responsible for putting research and educational knowledge into use, has been labeled the “entrepreneurial university” (Clark, 1998). In this project we propose to investigate 20 Nordic universities’ (12 older and “Humboldtian” universities and 8 institutes of technology) development into entrepreneurial universities. As the institutional and economic environment differ in the four Nordic countries the university resource- and capability-base for commercialization and innovation could be assumed to differ and thus to result in different university strategies, structures and performance making comparative case studies of interest. The aim of the research program is to increase the empirical knowledge regarding the Nordic universities development into entrepreneurial universities. Theoretically we aim to develop the resource- and capability view of the firm to the university organization with a focus on the university’s entrepreneurial role. The project is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for a three-year period 2011-2013.