Abstract:

Academic entrepreneurship has become one of the main challenges of higher education institutions all over Europe, having evolved from individual non-interconnected activities developed by academic institutions to a more structured and systematic need. Historically, activities have been taken place across Europe but efforts are fragmented and often driven by external actors instead of by the education system itself (European Commission, 2002). Few universities in Europe have academic entrepreneurship activities based in an entrepreneurship strategy with clear objectives and measurement that really focus on the local needs and context. Therefore, higher education institutions require an adequate and cohesive framework that encompasses the various dimensions of entrepreneurship education. There are a number of strong initiatives and practices that are present but also several gaps in the academic efforts around entrepreneurship.

The aim of this paper is to provide higher education institutions an entrepreneurial management model (management framework), that will provide them with an entrepreneurial maturity scoring or level, and giving some recommendations to get to a higher maturity level. First and foremost, the overview of existing literature of Technological Academic Entrepreneurship has been developed. Following to that, the most influential factors in entrepreneurial maturity in universities have been identified and selected. Finally, the management model has been designed, in order to help the higher education institutions that are seeking to foster entrepreneurship in their institutions.

Keywords:

Higher education institutions, management model, framework, maturity level and design.