An Entrepreneurial University Taxonomy Proposal

In the last decades the European higher education landscape has changed from only teaching to economic and social development of the regions (Bronstein and Reihlen in Ind Higher Educ 28(4):245–262, 2014; Maassen in From governance to identity. Springer, Berlin, pp 95–112, 2009; Pinheiro and Stensaker in Public Organ Rev 14(4):497–516, 2013; Vukasovi et al. in Effects of higher education reforms: change dynamics. Sense Publishers, Netherlands, 2012), turning the Entrepreneurial University into a potential solution to these changes (Clark in Creating entrepreneurial universities: organizational pathways of transformation. Pergamon, Kidlington (Oxford), 1998). Due to this fact, this paper shows an Entrepreneurial Universities taxonomy proposal exploring the nature of the Entrepreneurial University’s results. Based on a cluster analysis, three distinct groups are identified, which are in different phases within the transformation into an Entrepreneurial University: (i) the first group of universities (Cluster 2) is in the first phase of the path, since they are not obtaining high Entrepreneurial University’s results yet; (ii) the second group (Cluster 3) is in the second phase of the path, obtaining good results in hard entrepreneurial university results; and finally, (iii) the third group (Cluster 1) is composed by the most Entrepreneurial Universities. In addition, universities are not unmovable within a group, they can improve and move from one stage to the upper one or not continue that path and move down again to a lower stage. In fact, this paper shows which the main levers are in order to move from one stage to another.