The organizational architecture of entrepreneurial universities across the stages of entrepreneurship: a conceptual framework

Entrepreneurial universities contribute directly and indirectly to supporting all stages of entrepreneurship. The challenge for entrepreneurial universities is how they can best support academic entrepreneurs through these stages of entrepreneurship. This has led to the creation of different and often ad hoc organizational units within an entrepreneurial university. The organizational challenge for entrepreneurial universities is the selection of the appropriate formal organizational architecture to support the stages of entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to examine the organizational architecture of entrepreneurial universities and how it supports the stages of entrepreneurship — latent, emergent, launch, and growth. Our conceptual organizational framework conflates the stages of entrepreneurship with the actual needs of university-based entrepreneurs and how these needs are supported through different formal organizational units within the organizational architecture of entrepreneurial universities. Therein, we categorize three types of formal organizational units — those that focus on exploration stages of entrepreneurship, those that straddle exploration and exploitation stages of entrepreneurship, and those that boundary span all stages of entrepreneurship. We conclude by discussing the resultant organizational tensions for entrepreneurial universities and highlight future avenues of research. One of the challenges that managers of entrepreneurial universities face relates to the necessary formal organizational structures that are needed to be put in place to support university-based entrepreneurs and meet their actual needs across the stages of entrepreneurship (latent, emergent, launch, and growth). We categorize three types of formal organizational units — those that have an exclusive focus on exploration stages of entrepreneurship, those that have a selective focus on exploration and exploitation stages of entrepreneurship, and those that have an overarching focus on all exploration and exploitation stages of entrepreneurship. We further highlight some organizational tensions as a result of these configurations that entrepreneurial university managers have to handle. Such tensions relate to resource, skill, and competence synergies, seamless organizational support for university-based entrepreneurs across the different stages of entrepreneurship, appropriate governance structures, alignment of organizational units with the wider entrepreneurship context, and the appropriate configuration and mix of organizational units to support the stages of entrepreneurship.