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 in place across Europe but efforts are fragmented and often driven by external actors instead of by the education system itself (EC, 2002). Few universities in Europe have academic entrepreneurship activities based on 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.

In order to deal with this situation, the Polytechnic College of Donostia (UPV-EHU)-San Sebastián, the School of Engineering Tecnun (University of Navarra) and Mondragon Unibertsitatea's Faculty of Engineering (financed by Gipuzkoa Provincial Council) are developing a project called UNEK+. The main objective of the project is to enhance the development of academic entrepreneurial activities in Gipuzkoa’s higher education institutions (HEI), providing an entrepreneurial management model (management framework), a roadmap and a set of well-defined activities to measure and improve the entrepreneurial maturity model. Therefore, the present article describes the theoretical part of this project; in fact, the Academic Entrepreneurial Management Model.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurial University, Entrepreneurial University’s results, Entrepreneurship education, University–Industry Cooperation.