The Entrepreneurial University: Institutional, Political and Social Factors

The mission of the public research university is to advance excellence in research, scholarship and creative activities. Within the increasing cutbacks in government spending on science, the university should achieve a greater degree of flexibility to be more prepared to respond to the needs of a knowledge-based society. It means the greater significance to the ways in which the production of scientific knowledge and the technology transfer are organized. We think that the political sociology of science approach can be adequately applied to study the institutional matrix of the entrepreneurial sector of the public research university. We suggest that intertwining of the institutional, political and social factors gives us an opportunity to build a good explanatory model of the development of the research sector of the university. Political factors cover the state policies, programs and initiatives to engage in and support the technology transfer. Institutional factors cover direct steps undertaken by the university officials to guarantee true entrepreneurial activity. And social factors include both the relationship between the university and the public, and the dynamics of aspirations and value orientations within the community of scholars, contract researchers, project managers, technicians and other professionals who actually make theoretical and practical advancements of science a success. The conjunction of such factors involves a broad cast of actors with different goals and of different legacies. So it is not a surprise that such factors can be multidirectional. We think that a careful study of antagonisms inherent in such factors may provide us with good insights into regional science-based economic development. To justify this, some results of a broad study of the entrepreneurial activity and the research sectors of the universities in Western Siberia will be provided.