Detection of Best Practices in the Field of University Entrepreneurship

PREFACE
The University of Girona is a young institution with no more than a decade in existence.
While its Technology Transfer Office was created at the very beginning with the aim of
serving the academic community in innovation and commercial matters, it was only 12
months ago that it expanded its operations to promote and support the creation of
university-based spin-offs. This new structure is directly sponsor by the Catalan
Government as part of its Innovation Plan aimed at increasing economic activity in a
series of high tech sectors with the aim of generating high value-adding jobs. This is not
unlike the efforts seen in many other countries. This financing backup has allowed the
University of Girona to carry out this study of best practices in the field of
entrepreneurship in Europe.
Our thanks go especially to all the centers and persons visited, who very kindly donated
their time, patience and expertise in helping us better understand how entrepreneurship
within the university environment is understood and managed today in Europe.
This report must be put into context, considering the little experience that the University
of Girona has in this field. It was first conceived to be a learning experience for our
university at a moment when our entrepreneurship support program is taking shape.
Therefore, some of our findings may be evident to those with a long-standing track
record. Nevertheless, we feel most people can benefit from the wealth and diversity of
experiences analyzed in our study.
As a recommendation, and given the time constraints that everybody experiences
nowadays, we recommend reading first through the list of best practices identified. One
may then decide to go into further detail by reading the individual center reports, as
desired. It is having in mind the realistic time availability of people in spin-off support
units that we decided to put the over 60 best practices detected straight up front. Our
aim in detecting these was to provide applicable policies in the field of entrepreneurship
management, which can lead to tangible improvements of a center’s operation and
results. We did not want this study to be theoretical in nature but very much practical
and implementable.