Case study of Transition to Entrepreneurial University: University as a Micro Ecosystem of Microenterpris

Abstract 1
Higher education institutions are faced nowadays with the need to apply entrepreneurship to
all disciplines, specializations tracks, and courses provided in order to keep up with the 21st-
century labour market dynamism. By pairing innovation with entrepreneurial mindset and skill
sets in higher education, a new concept has emerged: The Entrepreneurial university which
focuses on bringing academic innovations to the market. University –based entrepreneurial
ecosystems have emerged as one of the most dynamic forces shaping the economic performance
of individuals, companies, regions and countries. This paper employs action research
methodology to construct a framework for illustrative explaining the entrepreneurial university
as an entrepreneurial micro ecosystem. With the aim of illustrating a representative case, we
first explore the challenges and solutions of the Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences &
Natural Resources when contributing to the development of an university-based entrepreneurial
micro- ecosystem. The reflection has been conducted as one of the key steps in the action
research to extract a series of institutional lessons learned based on lived experience for the
transition to an entrepreneurial university.