Co-creation in the entrepreneurial university: unraveling systemic value tensions

In the global economy's shift towards a knowledge-based paradigm, universities have been compelled to reassess their roles, not only as educational and research centers but also as economic actors. The modern entrepreneurial university is concerned with foster-ing knowledge transfer, innovation and entrepreneurship by engaging its students and researchers with societal stakeholders in a broad spectrum of collaborative activities.
However, sustaining such activities requires acknowledging the diverse and sometimes conflicting expectation of the various (and often many) stakeholders involved, including the university itself. Furthermore, the challenge lies also in orchestrating the portfolio of such activities. As such, this thesis advances the very notion of entrepreneurial university by addressing how complex and systemic value tensions arise in its multi-stakeholder activities. Grounded in a qualitative methodological framework, this research exploits the lens of Service-Dominant Logic (SDL), a marketing mid-range theory that has addressed how value is co-created and distributed in collaborative settings.
This dissertation unfolds across three interrelated articles (A-C), each addressing different facets of the value co-creation and tension reconciliation process within the entrepreneur-ial university's activities. Article A employs SDL to explain value creation and proposi-tion dynamics within the entrepreneurial university, conceptualizing it as a network of service systems. Article B focuses on a specific type of entrepreneurial university’s ac-tivity, that is a case-study of entrepreneurship education, assessing how multiple stake-holders concretely negotiate value creation influencing the educational design. Finally, Article C shifts to entrepreneurship educators, exploring their design practices in navi-gating value tensions to deliver effective educational programs.
By synthesizing insights across these studies, the dissertation contributes significantly to understanding the entrepreneurial university as a complex, adaptive system poised at the intersection of academia, industry, and society. It highlights the need for strategic ap-proaches to design and manage multi-stakeholder engagements and co-creation activities, with the aim of addressing and reconciling the inherent value tensions. This work ad-vances the scholarly understanding of the entrepreneurial university's functionality as a value co-creation institution, offering valuable theoretical and practical insights for navi-gating the intricate landscape of higher education in the knowledge economy.