Organizational ambidexterity refers to the ability of an organization to both explore and exploit—to compete in mature technologies and markets where efficiency, control, and incremental improvement are prized and to also compete in new technologies and markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation are needed. In the past 15 years there has been an explosion of interest and research on this topic. We briefly review the current state of the research, highlighting what we know and don't know about the topic. We close with a point of view on promising areas for ongoing research.

Organizational Ambidexterity: Past, Present, and Future

Organizational ambidexterity refers to the ability of an organization to both explore and exploit--to compete in mature technologies and markets where efficiency, control, and incremental improvement are prized and to also compete in new technologies and markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation are needed. In the past 15 years there has been an explosion of interest and research on this topic. We briefly review the current state of the research, highlighting what we know and don't know about the topic. We close with a point of view on promising areas for ongoing research.

Organizational Ambidexterity: Past, Present and Future

Purpose – Facing the multiplication of entrepreneurship education programmes (EEP) and the increasing resources allocated, there is a need to develop a common framework to evaluate the design of those programmes. The purpose of this article is to propose such a framework, based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Design/methodology/approach – TPB is a relevant tool to model the development of entrepreneurial intention through pedagogical processes. The independent variables are the characteristics of the EEP and the dependent variables are the antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour. To illustrate and test the relevance of the evaluation methodology, a pilot study is conducted. Findings – Data are consistent and reliable, considering the small scale of this experiment. The EEP assessed had a strong measurable impact on the entrepreneurial intention of the students, while it had a positive, but not very significant, impact on their perceived behavioural control. Research implications/limitations – This is a first step of an ambitious research programme aiming at producing theory-grounded knowledge. Reproduction of the experiment will allow researchers to test how specific characteristics of an EEP influence its impact and how the impact differs across several cohorts of students. Those comparisons will serve to improve a priori the design of EEP. Originality/value – The new methodology is built on a robust theoretical framework and based on validated measurement tools. Its originality is about a relative – longitudinal – measure of impact over time and a particular use of the theory of planned behaviour which is seen as an assessment framework.

Assessing the Impact of Entrepreneurship Education Programmes: A New Methodology

Increasing the number of high growth firms (HGFs) is now a major focus for industry policy in developed countries. However, existing approaches are proving ineffective. Simply creating supportive framework conditions is insufficient. Creating favourable environments for business start-ups is not leading to the creation of more HGFs. And transactional forms of support for HGFs (e.g. financial assistance) are proving to have limited effectiveness, at least post-start-up. The entrepreneurship ecosystem approach has emerged as a response. It recognises that HGFs flourish in distinctive types of supportive environment. Distinguishing features of entrepreneurial ecosystems include the following: a core of large established businesses, including some that have been entrepreneur-led (entrepreneurial blockbusters); entrepreneurial recycling – whereby successful cashed out entrepreneurs reinvest their time, money and expertise in supporting new entrepreneurial activity; and an information-rich environment in which this information is both accessible and shared. A key player in this context is the deal-maker who is involved in a fiduciary capacity in several entrepreneurial ventures. Other important aspects of an entrepreneurial ecosystem include its culture, the availability of start-up and growth capital, the presence of large firms, universities and service providers. However, studies have tended to take a static approach to the study of entrepreneurial ecosystems, largely ignoring both their origins and stimulus and also the processes by which they become self-sustaining. Creating entrepreneurial ecosystems poses various challenges for policy-makers. There are several general principles that need to be followed. Policy intervention needs to take a holistic approach, focusing on the following: the entrepreneurial actors within the ecosystem; the resource providers within the ecosystem; entrepreneurial connectors within the ecosystem and the entrepreneurial environment of the ecosystem. Finally, it is important that policy-makers develop metrics in order to determine the strengths and weaknesses of individual ecosystems so that their strengths and weaknesses can be assessed, to identify whether and how to intervene, and monitor over time the effectiveness of such interventions. What to measure, approaches to measurement and access to data at the appropriate geographical scales all pose formidable challenges.

/pdf/entrepreneurial-ecosystems-and-growth-oriented-1jpne7eap7.pdf

Entrepreneurial ecosystems and growth oriented entrepreneurship

https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/files/6885391/impact.pdf

The impact of entrepreneurship education on the entrepreneurial intention of students in science and engineering versus business studies university programs

http://www.isihome.ir/freearticle/ISIHome.ir-23025.pdf

Startups by recent university graduates and their faculty: Implications for university entrepreneurship policy

Earlier research on the role of universities in fostering entrepreneurial economic development almost exclusively covers spin-offs by faculty and staff. In contrast, we provide general evidence from the U.S. showing that the gross flow of science and engineering university graduates’ start-ups is at least an order of magnitude larger than faculty spin-offs, that a recent graduate is twice as likely as her Professor to start a business within three years of graduation, and that the graduates’ spin-offs are not of low quality. Three case studies illustrate how universities may stimulate science and engineering students and recent graduates to create new firms of high quality. We conclude that transforming university goals and practices toward increasing start-ups led by faculty might not be the most effective way for universities to stimulate entrepreneurial economic development.

Startups by Recent University Graduates and their Faculty - Implications for University Entrepreneurship Policy

This literature review spans several areas of research with a focus on the impact of universities on local entrepreneurship and economic development. This review will analyze whether social welfare is maximized through private ownership of university research and the impact of the increased private protection of these rights on welfare. We will discuss whether maximizing local entrepreneurship necessarily maximizes total welfare. Finally, we will ask whether much of past research and practice on commercializing research from universities may have missed the target. Our hypothesis is that the majority of local entrepreneurial economic development affected by universities is in the form of start-ups created by former students. If this hypothesis is confirmed then the recent transformation of university goals and practices toward increasing spin-off rates and new firm creation by university faculty and researchers may be called to question.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/119010/1/ERSA2010_0822.pdf

Universities, Entrepreneurship, and Local Economic Development

Recent research has identified several mechanisms to overcome the inherent tensions between exploration and exploitation within organizations (Raisch & Birkinshaw, 2008; Lavie, Stettner & Tushman, ...

Consistently Capricious: The Performance Effects of Simultaneous and Sequential Ambidexterity

There has been an increased trend in the number of spin-offs generated by universities in the past thirty years. Past research reveals that the majority of these start-ups are located in the same region as the university from which they originated. In this paper, we investigate critically what universities do to encourage entrepreneurship to increase regional economic development. We will also discuss whether maximizing local entrepreneurship necessarily maximizes total welfare. Unfortunately, the scientific evidence reviewed in this paper indicates that policy changes at universities typically have very little impact on commercialization of research and the benefits to the universities are marginal. For example, current evidence indicates that creating incubators and science parks on university grounds have no discernable effects on local start-up rates. Further, from a theoretical perspective we have reviewed articles showing that introducing Technology Licensing Offices (TLOs), the most popular method to stimulate research commercialization, may likely introduce economic inefficiencies, hold-ups and decision biases that deviate from what is optimal. The median university among the top U.S. research-based institutions creates less than two academic spin-offs per year and so the relative effects on local economic conditions through TLO efforts and policies are bound to be marginal. Nevertheless the evidence also shows that the scientific stature of the faculty, the commercialization culture at the university, and the sheer number of science and engineering students graduated do have important positive effects on local start-up rates. Increasing expenditures on university staff and students causes increases in regional productivity growth and innovation and the marginal effects are much bigger in structurally weak regions. Evidence confirms that university spin-offs disproportionally favor local development. Maybe as much as 80 percent of all university spin-offs are and remain locally situated. However, universities that maximize local effects will not maximize their societal impact. Instead, it appears more efficient if universities simply try to maximize licensing revenues and not worry about the number of spin-offs and their locations.

Navid Bazzazian

Papers

Startups by recent university graduates and their faculty: Implications for university entrepreneurship policy

Startups by Recent University Graduates and their Faculty - Implications for University Entrepreneurship Policy

Universities, Entrepreneurship, and Local Economic Development

Consistently Capricious: The Performance Effects of Simultaneous and Sequential Ambidexterity

Universities, Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development