Abstract:

Introduction:
During the last twenty years uneven entrepreneurship education initiatives increased not only in Italian universities aimed at training qualified professionals capable of promoting entrepreneurship projects, processes and products. Albeit in the presence of a common law, each university, sometimes in collaboration with private organizations, has launched different typologies of incubators and accelerators aimed at providing a variety of entrepreneurship education initiatives for unlike types of spin-offs and start-ups.
For the Italian case, the chaotic heterogeneity both of legal forms of receiving entities (different types of spin-offs and start-ups) and of the training offer provided in the Italian university context (e.g. incubator, accelerator, etc.) together with the frequent discrepancies between the various definitions and practices of "entrepreneurship education" can constitute elements that are at least worthy of reflection, while critical, on what type of "entrepreneurship education" and whom is being promoted.
Among the various questions: Are there a common definition of "entrepreneurship education"? How many types of spin-offs and start-ups and how many forms of incubators and accelerators are present in the Italian higher education context? How much and to what extent is the training offer diversified?
These and other relevant questions prompted us to explore this topic with regard to the higher education Italian context.

Objective:
The paper presents the results of an international research project funded by the University of International Studies of Rome with the aim to explore the issue of "entrepreneurship education" in the Italian university context.
The research question is: What are the common and different aspects on the topic of "entrepreneurship education" initiatives, who delivers them and who is it aimed at?

Methodology:
In order to answer the research question, both a systematic analysis of the literature concerning "entrepreneurship education" in the Italian university context and a systematic analysis of the practices attributable to this issue were carried out. The systematic review is carried out following the PRISMA guidelines. The main keywords were "spin-off", "start-up" “incubator”, “accelerator” and “educational entrepreneurship”. For this purpose, PubMed was considered in the time frame 2000 – 2023. The systematic analysis of the Italian higher education context for “entrepreneurship education” was conducted a qualitative-quantitative research design with an ad hoc strategy based on 10 variables useful for understanding the vast and complex higher education Italian panorama on the subject.

Results:
Overall, the results highlight or the two methodologies used, on the one hand different theoretical positions on the subject, already only in the pedagogical field, and on the other hand a plethora of diversified experiences that sometimes only have in common the labels used (e.g. spin-off, start-up, entrepreneurship education, incubator, accelerator, etc.) in the face of a lack of a shared operating framework even in the presence of a common reference legislation.
The results return indications, among others, to policy makers, instructional designers, decisionmakers of the Third Mission to understand the limits and possibilities of the Italian case, while still offering useful suggestions for subsequent comparative research on a European and international scale.

Keywords:

Higher education, entrepreneurship education, spin-off and start-ups, systematic analysis.