Abstract
Embedding entrepreneurship into the university mission and culture in developing countries is key to national economic growth and social development. Therefore, having a better understanding of university-based entrepreneurial ecosystems considered as benchmark cases is a good start to introduce to the topic. For such reason, the objective of this chapter is to describe the situation of the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Guadalajara, Mexico, its leading actors and roles, and how they have been relevant to promote entrepreneurial initiatives among higher education students, alumni, and faculty members. Along with the case description and based on a previous study, the authors present a comparison of Tecnologico de Monterrey case with four universities' entrepreneurial ecosystems. Findings suggest that the strategy followed to promote university-based entrepreneurship depends on the internal capabilities of each institution and the capacity of the region to support it.
TopEntrepreneurial Ecosystems
Some authors consider the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems as an emerging approach (Napier & Hansen, 2011; Malecki, 2011; Kantis & Federico, 2012). Moore (1993), who claimed that businesses do not evolve in a ‘vacuum,’ and noted the relationally embedded nature of how firms interact, initially coined the term ecosystem with suppliers, customers, and financiers. Moore was one of the pioneers setting the basis for research emphasizing the businesses context. In this line of thought, Rosted (2012) recently suggested that in dynamic ecosystems new firms have better opportunities to grow and create employment, compared with firms established in other locations.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Entrepreneurial Activity: A process of designing, launching, and running a new business that offers a product, process, or service for sale or hires. Commonly, entrepreneurs involved in an entrepreneurial activity requires support from their environment in terms of financing, advising, selling, among others.
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor: A worldwide research initiative aiming to have a better understanding of the entrepreneurship phenomena, both, in an individual level but also in terms of the entrepreneurial ecosystem conditions.
Tecnológico de Monterrey: A comprehensive, multi-campus and non-profit private university that offers academic programs in high school, undergraduate and graduate levels. It is located in Mexico, was founded in 1943 and it is well known for creating and promoting University-based entrepreneurial ecosystems within its main campuses. The university has the 14th best undergraduate entrepreneurship program in the world, according to the new ranking in The Princeton Review 's Top Schools for Entrepreneurship Studies for 2018.
Technology Transfer: A process of disseminating technology from the actors and locations of its origination to broader distribution among more people and places. It occurs along various approaches, being the most common, from universities to businesses.
University-Based Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A number of entrepreneurial actors and organizations within the boundaries of a university that connect, mediate and govern the performance of the entrepreneurial environment in order to support students and the external community in order to promote their entrepreneurial initiatives.
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: A number of entrepreneurial actors, organizations, and institutions following a process in order to connect, mediate, and govern the performance of the entrepreneurial environment.
Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions: A framework used by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) to diagnose and promote the entrepreneurial activity around the world, consisting of nine dimensions (financing, government policies, taxes and bureaucracy, government programs, school-level entrepreneurship education and training, post-school entrepreneurship education and training, R&D transfer, access to commercial and professional infrastructure, internal market dynamics, domestic market burdens, access to physical and services support, and social and cultural norms).
Ecosystem: A network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment. Such system can be of any size and usually is encompassed in a specifically limited space.