Knowledge entrepreneurship in universities. Practice and strategy in the case of Internet based innovation appropiation

Abstract

The thesis argues that knowledge entrepreneurship is a cogent and apt argument to frame the idea of the university in the 21st century. This is true because it combines the positive creative destruction of entrepreneurship but also acknowledges the socio-transformational mandate of universities (and education as a whole). Knowledge entrepreneurship is found to consist of an entrepreneurial mindset coupled with gestell (infra-structure). These are the necessary components to develop the capacity to constantly exploit the strategic opportunities for innovation (as has been described in the case of internet based innovation appropriation). The work finds the assessment that "less than 15 per cent of universities had a long-term strategy on how to integrate new technology" (Warden, 2004) made in 2004 by the chairman of the Spanish Rectors' Information Technology Working Group still to be true for Europe in 2007. The work elaborates on the physical and meta-physical conditions that can help universities to address this deficiency.