Projects funded 2014-2015

UNEK project funded

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UNEK; Unibertsitate Ekintzailearen bila project has been funded by the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, within the financial aid call "Programa para la promoción de Gipuzkoa como un territorio que aprende".

Objectives

To obtain a maturity model for measuring the level of academic entrepreneurship in the technology schools and universities located in the Historical Territory of Gipuzkoa, as well as providing a roadmap to enable each of them to evolve from a stage or level of entrepreneurship to a higher one.

This global objective is broken down into concrete or operational objectives that are, in this case, conflated with the stages of project development.

1. Design and development of the maturity model of academic entrepreneurship: based on the literature review carried out, it consists of determining the factors to consider, as well as their method measurement and evaluation.
2. Experimentation. It consists of putting into practice what was defined in the first stage. To do this, it has been considered appropriate to carry out a first test, as a validation, of the model at the internal level, that is, within the framework of the Higher Polytechnic School of Mondragon Unibertsitatea. Then, and once the relevant contributions are collected and their suitability is assessed, they will be expanded in the application framework, with the participation of the technology schools of Gipuzkoa.
3. Validation of the model. The third stage consists of the validation. To do this, the evaluation mechanism designed in the first stage will be used, and the results obtained within the project team will be evaluated.

 

 

Stages

The Stages to be developed have been structured according to four work packages, which will enable the response to the defined objectives.

1. Design and development of the model and evaluation system.

• Literature compilation, planning of the academic entrepreneurship model and development of the evaluation system/mechanism.
• Internal testing of the model and the evaluation system.

2. Field work.

• Contact and presentation of the planning of the work to representatives of the schools under study.
• Execution of the field work.

3. Territorial report of the level of entrepreneurship of the universities in Gipuzkoa.

• Extraction of conclusions and good practices identified in each school.
• Documentation of the experience to prepare the territorial report.
• Assessment of possible routes for expansion and exploitation.

4. Communication and dissemination
   1. Start-up of the project website.
   2. Updating of the contents of the website and maintenance.
   3. Dissemination of the results in the congress or conference.

Methodology

For the development of the UNEK project, three work packages (WP) have been planned, as can be seen in the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). Each WP has its own objective, structure and deliverables that can be queried in the corresponding sections.

This project is presented under the protection of an integral management of the project, which due to its importance, has been given the shape of an actual work package. Thus, the project management itself, which will be developed according to the PMBok (Project Management Body of Knowledge) standard, which defines and adapts the stages of project management to the well-known PDCA cycle of E. Deming, encompasses the totality of the project.

Research team

• UNED Bergara
• UPV-EHU - University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibersitatea
• University of Navarra (TECNUN)
• Mondragon Unibertsitatea - Goi Eskola Politeknikoa (MU-GEP)
  • Nekane Errasti
  • Leire Markuerkiaga
  • Juan Ignacio Igartua
  • Miren Zubizarreta

Results

Although there is no consensus on a single definition of the Entrepreneurial University (Guerrero and Urbano, 2010), several authors have stated that the Entrepreneurial University is composed of a series of characteristics that, together, make up this phenomenon (Gibb, 2012). In fact, the characteristics become factors that contribute to the emergence of the Entrepreneurial University (Rothaermel et al., 2007, Guerrero et al., 2011). For that reason, within the UNEK project and based on an extensive review of the literature, a maturity model was developed for the measurement of academic entrepreneurship in the technology schools and universities located in the Historical Territory of Gipuzkoa.

The following figure shows the different factors that have been measured and analysed within the technology schools of Gipuzkoa.

 

In compliance with the objectives, the results of the project are as follows:

• Report of the Academic Entrepreneurship Maturity Level existing in the Schools of Gipuzkoa, as well as of the Vocational Training Centres, involving higher education centres.
• A validated Academic Entrepreneurship Maturity Model.
• A validated Evaluation System for measuring the Academic Entrepreneurship existing in a School or Centre.