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.