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entrepreneurship education
as knowledge transfer
process in university
The Innovation U framework encompasses
the boundary-spanning structures that reflect the
universities relations with industry, local state
and government through: programs development
activities of state and local economic develop-
ment organizations, industrial advisory boards
and councils with business community. These
mechanisms are expected to contribute to eco-
nomic development by producing
locally captured
(technological) outcomes
. These outcomes can
be structured in three university roles: education
(smart people), research (new knowledge) and the
knowledge transfer to society (entrepreneurship,
knowledge, technology, know-how).
The entrepreneurial outcome can be considered
as a result of the enterprising university-industry-
government relationship. According to Ropke
(1998) the university itself, as an organization,
can become entrepreneurial, the university mem-
bers can become entrepreneurs and the university
interaction with the region can follow entrepre-
neurial patterns.
In accord with the above considerations, the
first research aim was to overview the activities
type that are carried out by university in the field
of knowledge transfer and that can be considered
for entrepreneurship education as knowledge
capitalization processes. In accord with the refer-
ences (Ropke, 1998), (Tornatzky et al., 2002), the
ten most mentioned activities are shown in Table
2. These knowledge transfer activities were ana-
lyzed in the case of the “Politehnica” University
of Timisoara, Romania (Draghici, et. al., 2009).
The identification of the knowledge transfer
activities allowed their characterization by trans-
lating into a scale of increasing mutual obligations
or increasing cooperation and integration of the
“actors” on the market (Figure 2). The mecha-
nisms of knowledge transfer evolve linked with
the stages of cooperation from the traditional
knowledge transfer organization (the first stage)
and the virtual knowledge transfer organization
(the last stage). This virtual knowledge transfer
Knowledge management is vital for a university
to be able to develop its own knowledge, to come
up with new knowledge and to react to the work
environment in a way that should both meet the
organization scopes and to adapt to all perturba-
tions occurring in that work environment. Con-
sequently, knowledge management is becoming a
strategic process that enables universities to keep
up with all changes in the knowledge society,
to improve their competitiveness and evolve to
excellence. Within this framework has been de-
veloped the UNIKM project (UNIKM, 2009) and
its research activities. The general objectives of
the project are the sustain of research and devel-
opment activities, carried out in collaboration by
the consortium members (universities of Oradea,
Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara and Bucharest together
with a research institute for economic and social
researches in Romania), for the development of
a knowledge management based environment
in engineering education institutions, for new
approach and innovation generation in teaching
and research activities, as well as the effective-
ness and efficiency improvement of their services.
Some research results gained in this project will
be presented in the following.
In the knowledge based society universities
play an enhanced role in innovation as entrepre-
neur. They retains the traditional academic roles
of social reproduction and extension of certified
knowledge, but placed them in a broader context
as part of its new role in promoting innovation.
Based on the tri-lateral networks and hybrid
organizations model there have been developed
a framework to analyze how universities devel-
oped their implication and contribution to local
(regional) economic development (Etzkowitz and
Leydesdorff, 2000), (Tornatzky, et. al., 2002),
(Draghici, et. al., 2009) (Figure 1).
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