Regional Policy Implications of the Entrepreneurial University

Abstract

The chapter addresses the question of how universities respond to regional policy, and in particular, the ways in which academics are motivated and encouraged by regional development policies. The chapter specifically asks whether entrepreneurial universities create frameworks which allow university actors to positively contribute to collective development activities (such as clusters or technology transfer networks) by building new kinds of regional institutions. The chapter uses examples from three universities that all seek to be actively regionally engaged. This chapter identifies the factors that both encourage but also discourage these individual actors and notes that ongoing connections between individual academics and regional partners are critical to ensuring this constructive collaboration. The chapter contends that regional innovation policy should devote more resources to building these critical links.