Applying entrepreneurial ecosystem frameworks to studying the entrepreneurial university

This study extends a recent conceptual advancement of what the entrepreneurial university (EntUni) is to study this phenomenon using the frameworks of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE). The EE frameworks are holistic frameworks that are useful in understanding the diverse factors that interact to attain entrepreneurial outputs and outcomes. Recent criticism of the EE literature concludes that is consists of “long laundry lists of relevant factors” (Stam, 2015, p. 1764), without attaining actionable causal or conceptual models. Meanwhile, the literature on EntUni has been driven by myriads of models that have historically remained relatively fragmented in terms of which aspect of the phenomenon is being studied. By adopting a holistic EE lens to studying the EntUni phenomenon, this study aims to enable further research on how universities generate entrepreneurial outcomes. By proposing the EntUni as an EE, this study contributes back to the EE literature by revealing more nuanced examples of EE. From these examples, we might recognize the relative importance of each factor in EE frameworks resulting in more actionable EE models