Introduction to Academic Entrepreneurship

The aim of the chapter is to provide practitioners and researchers, who wish to investigate academic entrepreneurship in details, with the basic characteristics of the phenomenon as an introduction to further exploration. As university entrepreneurship is rooted in the broader entrepreneurship theory, the investigation encompassed a set of definitions, types, and processes pertaining to both industrial and academic context. It also provides an examination into the effectiveness of the policy-driven approach in enhancing academic entrepreneurship. This study has been conducted on the basis of the literature review and inductive argumentation, leading to the formulation of a conceptual framework for university entrepreneurship. The key finding is that although the classic forms of academic entrepreneurship, such as organizational creation, renewal, and innovation fit to the academic context, they are not sufficient to reflect the variety of all the forms. In turn, a new definition of university entrepreneurship is provided.