“Carrying out innovation is the only function which is fundamental in history”, was one of the visionary quotes of Schumpeter (1939)
Fifty years later, global economic crises caused significant challenges requiring the implementation of innovative solutions, based on reliable knowledge, to cope with the uncertainty of a constantly changing environment (OECD, 1996). Consequently, global economies have been transformed from industrial to knowledge-based economies. Thus, as legitimate knowledge providers institutions, universities’ role have been enhanced from education and research institutions to regional economic development actors. This role is increasingly enabled by the emergence of the Triple Helix model, as a model of knowledge. The triple helix model is stressing three ‘helices’: academia/universities, industry, and state/government, that intertwine to shape innovation ecosystems, that are vital to regional development in today’s knowledge-based economy. Which is strategically aligned with the so-called university third mission, i.e., the university’s contributions to societal and economic development, by ensuring knowledge commercialization beyond knowledge creation (second mission: research), and knowledge dissemination (first mission: teaching)
This was the essential mission of building the first university, which was disseminating knowledge and delivering training accomplishment degrees
The model of universities evolved towards the creation of new knowledge by reporting results of the evolution of phenomenons from observations and experiments
Transforming knowledge from theory to practice, by promoting entrepreneurial skills, innovation, social welfare and the formation of human capital
The originality of our methodology comes from the holistic ecosystem approach, we are adopting to reduce distances between human, organizational, and social capital in universities. To allow the transformation of universities’ abundant knowledge flow into reliable competitive advantages for its student. Accomplishing the university’s third mission by building university-based entrepreneurial ecosystems as sustainable foundations for entrepreneurial higher education institutions, empowering entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development within universities and the broader community. bridging the gap between academia and industry, fostering an environment where entrepreneurial ideas can thrive and contribute to societal, economic, and environmental development. Hence, shifting the paradigm from a higher education system generating job seekers graduates to job creators graduates, fully committed to resolving the most challenging issues of the planet by creating sustainable social, economic, and environmental solutions based on the knowledge they have learned during their higher education journey.
To ensure the sustainability of the outcomes of our approach, we initially adopt the framework of Isenberg of ecosystems based on the 6 following pillars:
Optimizing knowledge enabling the capacity of entrepreneurs to recognize or create an opportunity and act upon it to produce innovative sustainability solutions
Providing incubation and acceleration programs to support entrepreneurs from the ideation to the go-to-market with capacity building and practical mentoring
Ensuring access to funding according to the projects’ financial stages from pre-seeds to scale-up and growth stages with internal and external funding mechanisms
Assisting entrepreneurs to access the market, starting by prototyping their business ideas in internal labs until the commercialization in local and international markets
Training entrepreneurs to structure the legal procedures of their startups in accordance with the local and national policies in favor of sustainability innovation
Promoting entrepreneurial culture, encouraging collaborative innovation, risk-taking, failure tolerance, nurturing entrepreneurship as a worthy occupation
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