Entrepreneurial University Archetypes: A Meta-Synthesis of Case Study Literature

Most research on the entrepreneurial university is case-study based. While this helps us to understand specific characteristics of particular cases, integrative studies that build on cumulated knowledge have yet to be conducted. This study aims to synthesize existing research and to generate archetypes of the entrepreneurial university by conducting a qualitative meta-synthesis of the empirical literature. The underlying assumption of this research is that there is no single model or best type of the entrepreneurial university. Nevertheless, the authors expect to see entrepreneurial universities converge into a few distinct archetypes that display similar organizational attributes. As primary data sources, they use twenty-seven case studies on entrepreneurial universities, which are synthesized into four empirically grounded archetypes: ‘Research-preneurial’ or research driven; ‘Techni-preneurial’ or industry driven; ‘Inno-preneurial’ or service innovation driven; and ‘Commerce-preneurial’ or knowledge commercialization driven. This meta-synthesis provides a taxonomy of various structures, strategies and resources that characterize entrepreneurial universities, serving as a conceptual framework for a heterogeneous body of literature.