A Qualitative Research on Determining the Dimensions of Academic Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in Turkey

This study is built on the subject of academic entrepreneurship which activates the university-industry cooperation and commercializing the university researches. Main problem is the reality of developing academic entrepreneurship to the targets has not yet achieved in Turkey. Therefore, the main objective of this study is determining the factors that affect academic entrepreneurship in its ecosystem. In this research, in-depth interviews with the semi-structured questions were conducted with 19 active academic entrepreneurs from 7 different geographical regions of Turkey. Data gathered were tested by making necessary coding with the NVivo 11. As a result, the conceptual model consists of 8 themes which are individuals, universities, human capital, environment, technopark, industry, access to finance and the government respectively. The results of the research show that individual characteristics have a great influence on the academicians' entrepreneurial activities. While various proposals have been made in order to create awareness in the perspective of the industry in Turkey, the entrepreneurial culture that should be spread in the academic arena is also underlined. While the deficiencies of existing technoparks in terms of physiological facilities and expert personnel are listed, their benefits in terms of consultancy and support are also emphasized. Results show that the supporting capacity of multidisciplinary studies at universities should increase and there is inadequacy of innovative human resources in technoparks. In addition to the favourable views of almost all academic entrepreneurs in accessing finance, the state is expected to make some improvements in supervision and bureaucratic functioning. The results of the study, along with providing comprehensive data, also provide suggestions for improvements that can be made in this area.

Keywords

Academic Entrepreneurship, Technoparks, Ecosystem of Academic Entrepreneurship