Investigating University ecosystems as a key factor for entrepreneurial education and behavior

The emergence of university-based makerspaces and innovation hubs along with the introduction of new entrepreneurship courses, have created novel dynamics and cultures within educational institutions. The aim of introducing these new initiatives is to create an ecosystem that supports innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) education and behavior in all levels of the institution to engage students in creating startup companies as well as developing their competences as innovators and entrepreneurs. However, among their community, the impact of these ecosystems in relation to the progress of entrepreneurial education is unclear. This thesis seeks to face the uncertainty of the impact with respect to the student body. To begin with, through a relaxed literature review, knowledge about the entrepreneurial ecosystems is established to formulate an evaluation template that analyzes the main domains of a university’s ecosystem; Leadership & Governance, Finance, Culture, Infrastructure, Human Capital, Markets & Networks and Metrics. This approach strives to determine the research framework for the project, which is based on five main areas of investigation: context, evolution, metrics, configuration and entrepreneurial education. In addition, three hypotheses (a, b, c) are established to delimitate the focus of the project. Subsequently, a case-study outline is determined from the evaluation of existing research within the field to study DTU’s ecosystem. The assessment is made through a deskresearch analysis where the current infrastructure is characterized. Beyond this assessment, thanks to semi-structured interviews, insights about the dynamics are gained. In addition, a comparison with other ecosystems endeavors the enrichment of the study. The collected data and findings are grouped into sub-groups under the seven main domains and brought together to detect key areas of improvement by identifying gaps, overlaps and contradictory points among relevant stakeholders. As a result, this evaluation can be used as a basis to further analyze the present challenges from which proposals can be developed. Eventually, three improvement areas are emphasized: 1) The current ecosystem’s configuration has led to a lack of cooperation and competitive dynamics, resulting in a chaotic ecosystem difficult to navigate if not familiar with; 2) The integration of entrepreneurial education (EEd) does not guarantee a gradual development of I&E capabilities; and 3) There is no common monitoring of the EEd impact on students’ I&E IV Master Thesis journeys. These three improvement areas provide a new perspective on the current situation of DTU’s I&E ecosystem regarding students’ behavior and education. The project suggests several proposals with the common goal of displaying the ecosystem as an appealing environment for students to develop their competences. It can be concluded that in order to acquire this target the tracking of the impact of the ecosystem is essential for optimizing its performance. Finally, the assessment of the implemented hypothesis leads to the following conclusions; a) Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem takes time, therefore, it can be permitted to have a chaotic configuration as long as the coopetition dynamic is balanced. b) The commitment towards entrepreneurship can be presumed by the relevant stakeholders, however, it won’t be fully validated until specific objectives are set. c) The integration of entrepreneurship education into the students’ curriculum is not a priority since DTU is a technical institution. Consequently, the ecosystem plays a crucial role in shaping the students entrepreneurial mindset through their participation in extracurricular activities