Identifying groups of entrepreneurial activities at universities

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify whether the entrepreneurial activities of universities in the UK can be statistically grouped together. Design/methodology/approach This paper is performing a principal component analysis (PCA) of the 2009/2010 UK Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey (HE-BCIS) data for the third stream activities of universities in the UK. Findings The PCA of the 144 included institutions identified four groups of entrepreneurial activities being engaged in by universities in the UK. Three of the four groups were related to spin-offs, labelled as “Staff Spin-off Activity”, “Non-HEI Owned Spin-Off Activity” and “Graduate Start-up Activity”. The remaining factor has been named “University Knowledge Exploitation Activity (UKEA)” and encompasses a wide range of university knowledge creation, exchange and exploitation activities. Research limitations/implications The research indicates, through a ranking system for each university for the various groups of entrepreneurial activities, that universities are often entrepreneurial in just one or two of the groups of entrepreneurial activities identified by the PCA. Identifying what is causing those differences is required to further understand why we see this variation across the HE sector. Originality/value The use of a PCA to identify groups of entrepreneurial activities is a novel approach. Typically studies use a select few indicators, such as spin-offs or patents to analyse the entrepreneurial activities of universities. This study uses PCA to group together statistically related activities which can then be used to identify what is driving these groups of activities in future studies.

Examining knowledge transfer activities in UK universities: advocating a PROMETHEE-based approach

“…First, it employs visualisation software that, with a few parameters, creates non-technical, user-friendly visualization of results (Brans, 1982;Brans and Vincke, 1985;Nemery et al, 2012). Second, it utilises the natural units to express and evaluate each criterion, meaning that it eliminates problems due to scaling, obviating the need for the normalization of scores, avoiding rankings that rely on the selected normalization method (Tofallis, 2008;Ishizaka and Nemery, 2011) or the log-based approach highlighted in Fuller et al, (2018). Instead, the decision-maker defines a preference function generally characterised by an indifference and preference threshold.…”

“…The paper extends this prior work by focusing on activities where the university itself was directly capturing value from its KT activities, providing a more fine grained analysis. Also, given the Fuller et al's (2018) dichotomy of continuums based on the extent to which a university can be seen as more "entrepreneurial", defined by concentration on a range of activities more likely primarily for their own benefit, and enterprising (more balanced in their focus in activities that both benefit themselves but also the economy more widely). The results in this paper can also be viewed in this context.…”

“…The knowledge transfer practices of universities, particularly in entrepreneurial and regional contexts, have garnered increased interest in recent discourse (see for example Martin et al, 2019;Pittaway et al, 2019;Fuller et al, 2018;Culkin, 2016). Knowledge transfer (KT) activities, also known as third mission activities or entrepreneurial activities (Philpott et al, 2011;Berbegal-Mirabent et al, 2013), are in the UK measured under the term Third Sector Activity (TSA).…”

“…Nevertheless, more recent work has also adopted this essentially dichotomous approach. Fuller et al (2018), for example, construct indexes based on universities existing along (indexed) dichotomous continuums in terms of the extent to which they can be seen as more "entrepreneurial" (defined by their concentration on a range of activities primarily for their own benefit) or "enterprising" (more balanced in their focus in activities that benefit both themselves but also the economy more widely).…”

“…Existing studies tend to focus on individual KT activities without considering the full portfolio of KT activities pursued by universities (Hewitt-Dundas, 2012;Abreu et al, 2016). Even where multiple KT activities have been analysed together, as in Fuller et al, (2018), analysis has concentrated on the overall resulting index score and university ranking, rather than analysing the range of ways in which similar rankings may be achieved by universities exhibiting different KT activity profiles.…”