Introduction: from diversity of interpretations to sustainability of institutions

Abstract

Academic entrepreneurship as a concept carries both utopian and dystopian views of entrepreneurship in academia (e.g. Clark, 1998;Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). Drawing from Ekman (2017, pp. 462-3), we suggest that these utopian and dystopian polarisations prevail 'at the expense of contradictions and grey zones' that we can find in different geographical contexts, changing historical periods, and across diverse academic lives. This book explores those grey zones, extending across and beyond polarised views. Addressing the more complex grey zones provides opportunities to study paradoxes, contradictions, and tensions concerning academic entrepreneurship and explore how these connect with patterns such as acceptance-resistance and oppressionemancipation (cf. Verduijn et al., 2014).The purpose of this book is to extend the boundaries of research on academic entrepreneurship. This starts with pushing the understanding of entrepreneurship 'as positive economic activity' towards entrepreneurship 'as social change' that can produce various outcomes (Steyaert & Hjorth, 2008). Entrepreneurship not only concerns economic activity but extends beyond it, and it is not only connected to positive outcomes. By academic entrepreneurship, we refer to all kinds of entrepreneurial activities carried out in academic contexts, including entrepreneurship education, research commercialisation, and the extension of university-industry and university-society relationships more widely. In a nutshell, the book challenges essentialist and polarised views of academic entrepreneurship using diverse theoretical insights and rich empirical data.