The transition towards entrepreneurial universities: an assessment of academic entrepreneurship in Italy

In this paper we illustrate the changes that the Italian university system underwent from the early 2000s till today, with a special focus on the transition to academic entrepreneurship. We describe these changes as part of more general and similar trends taking place in other European countries in the same period. The Italian case shows the on-going effort that national Government and academic institutions have been devoting to create better conditions to enable the successful commercialization of academic research results. Specifically, we look at the differences in the amount of academic entrepreneurship generated by the 64 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematical universities during the last decade, assessing the impact of normative and structural support mechanisms on the universities’ ability to engage with the market logic. Policy implications are discussed.