دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی کارآفرینی دانشگاهی دیجیتال: پتانسیل فن آوری های دیجیتالی - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

Today's digital technologies, such as social media, business analytics, the Internet of Things, big data, advanced manufacturing, 3D printing, cloud and cyber-solutions and MOOCs, permeate every private and public organization. However, even if this phenomenon has been analyzed for entrepreneurship in general, to the best of our knowledge, the impact of digital technologies on academic entrepreneurship remains not only slightly addressed. With the aim of filling this gap, this paper proposes a novel contribution regarding the emerging concept of Digital Academic Entrepreneurship. Based on a qualitative literature review, an interpretative framework for Digital Academic Entrepreneurship is deductively proposed that is composed of the following components: the rationale for the adoption of digital technologies for academic entrepreneurship (why), the emerging forms of digital academic entrepreneurship (what), the stakeholders involved through the digital technologies to achieve the academic entrepreneurship goal (who), and the processes of academic entrepreneurship supported by digital technologies (how). The discussion section provides a conceptualization of Digital Academic Entrepreneurship. The paper closes with the identification of a research agenda for this promising and under-researched field.

Conclusion and research agenda

The rapid acceleration of digital technologies in the past 10 years has had a global impact on markets and society (Nambisan et al., 2017). Digital technologies, such as social media, mobile, business analytics, the Internet of Things, big data, advanced manufacturing, 3D printing, cloud and cyber-solutions, MOOCs, and artificial intelligence, are creating further opportunities for researchers, entrepreneurs and policy makers. Digital technologies are making more flexible the activities, processes, and outcomes of Academic Entrepreneurship as well as sustaining the development of a novel concept: Digital Academic Entrepreneurship. This novel conceptualization has been characterized by a high level of utilization of new digital technologies to improve the emerging forms of academic entrepreneurship, such as the development of digital spinoffs and alumni start-ups, the creation of entrepreneurial competence supported by digital platforms and broader innovation development that goes beyond the region to embrace a “glocal” perspective. Digital Academic Entrepreneurship engages more stakeholders through the use of digital technologies to develop the academic entrepreneurial process with the final goal of democratizing access to the university ecosystem. As an emergent research field, scholars should devote future debate to new possibilities for universities to perform entrepreneurial activities taking advantage of digital technologies as discussed in this paper. Our aim is to show how a new direction of research should be followed to define the boundaries, if they exist, of Digital Academic Entrepreneurship. There is a need to address whether universities should be involved in academic entrepreneurship and if more universities can be involved in such processes due to the impact of digital technologies. Based on this premise, we propose a research agenda to open further investigation into the impact of new digital technologies on academic entrepreneurship processes. The agenda is organized into 4 research streams that can involve scholars in the near- and far future. Research stream 1: Why. The analysis of theoretical concepts and constructs that reflect how digital platforms' architecture can enhance democratization in the academic entrepreneurship research. The architectures of both digital infrastructures and digital platforms must be managed to exploit researchers' and students' ability (knowledge) and willingness (motivation) to act as entrepreneurs to obtain novel opportunities, to finalize technology transfer initiatives and objectives, and to pursue research contract activities. The opportunity to make more “democratic” the access to the university ecosystem makes the motivation behind the adoption of digital technologies for academic entrepreneurship more challenging.