Agricultural education
Fatemeh Oskuhi; Hamid Movahed Mohammadi; Ahmad Rarezvanfar; amir alambaigi
Abstract
The entrepreneurial ecosystem within universities is crucial for entrepreneurial activities as it not only acts as a lubricant to accelerate the commercialization of knowledge but also provides a framework for maintaining sustainable development in university entrepreneurship and contributes to its dynamism. ...
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The entrepreneurial ecosystem within universities is crucial for entrepreneurial activities as it not only acts as a lubricant to accelerate the commercialization of knowledge but also provides a framework for maintaining sustainable development in university entrepreneurship and contributes to its dynamism. This research aims to investigate the importance of networking within the university entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our perspective is applied, focusing on identifying and analyzing the relationships between educational groups and other related educational groups/organizations, both intra-group and inter-group, as well as external to the university, to facilitate the transition from idea to market. In this context, eight expert faculty members with technology or innovation ownership or relevant experience (key academic informants) were selected based on their expertise in entrepreneurship and innovation. The research tools included a semi-structured questionnaire and interviews. The interviews were designed around six main axes covering topics such as communication networks, challenges in technology commercialization, and intra-group and inter-group transactions. The analysis of the social networks of educational groups, using UCINET software, led to the examination of the primary communication networks within educational groups to achieve technology/innovation. According to the findings from the network analysis, the structure of the university entrepreneurial ecosystem follows a distinctive relational pattern, where key network indicators highlight the vital roles of specific educational groups and intermediary institutions. At the institutional level, the Entrepreneurship Faculty and the Science and Technology Park have effectively acted as knowledge brokers, creating a significant bridge between academic actors and market sectors. From the perspective of internal cohesion, network density indicates the existence of strong collaborative infrastructures within the ecosystem, although this indicator simultaneously reveals a structural challenge due to weak connections with the fields of humanities (especially economics and agricultural promotion). Therefore, the effectiveness of this ecosystem is based on a triangular synergy: specialized academic cores as engines for technology production, interdisciplinary collaborations as lubricants for developing integrated solutions, and institutional-industrial support (including the Ministry of Agriculture, the Science and Technology Park, and the Iranian Plant Pathology Society) facilitating the transition from laboratory to market, enabling the sustainable transformation of innovative ideas into commercialized products in the agricultural sector.
