Universidades empreendedoras e ambientes de inovação: uma proposta de sustentabilidade econômica para o ensino superior

Abstract

Universities went through revolutions, shifting their focus from teaching to research, and then from research to entrepreneurship. These revolutions ended up making entrepreneurship the newest mission of these institutions. In this scenario, innovation environments become tools that drive a culture of knowledge that generates innovation and fosters entrepreneurship. Thus, the concern is that these institutions are sustainable, since many of them are public and philanthropic and maintained economically only with government funding. In view of this, this thesis investigated how innovation environments, through scientific and technological parks, can help in the economic sustainability of entrepreneurial universities. For that, four Brazilian universities were used: the University of São Paulo (USP), the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), ranked by the Times Higher Education (THE), the World University Ranking (QS), the University Ranking Sheet (RUF) and the National Ranking of Entrepreneurial Universities of 2016 as the three best institutions in Brazil, and one more case for convenience, the University Feevale. In addition to the Brazilian institutions, an international case, Tecnológico de Monterrey, was included, as it is the only institution in Latin America ranked in the Princeton Review, a ranking that evaluates entrepreneurial universities in the United States. The ethical issues of this study were met based on Resolution 466/2012 of the National Health Council and the National Commission on Ethics in Research, generating approval of the thesis project by the Ethics Committee of the University of Caxias do Sul. by the theoretical approaches of the entrepreneurial university, the environments of innovation and sustainability, this thesis focused ontologically on the subject-object interaction and, epistemologically, on the constructivist, using the phenomenological paradigm with a qualitative approach and multiple case study method based on two units of analysis. At the data collection stage, 18 interviews were carried out in loco, with the aid of a semi-structured instrument. In the non-participant observation technique, the information was collected in all the environments visited through a field diary. The collection of documentary sources was done from documents delivered by the interviewees, from published articles, from the analyzed rankings and from the reports and sites of the institutions. These three sources of data collection are part of the triangulation of data. After this phase, the data were analyzed through the technique of content analysis, which made it possible to list five categories a priori and six a posteriori, totaling 11 categories in the study. For the treatment of the data, the software NVivo® version 11 was used. The findings originated a map for each one of the institutions, which allows the identification of the contribution of the entrepreneurial universities and of the innovation environments for the sustainability of these universities. In addition, the results allowed the proposal of a framework containing the relationships indicated from the research carried out. It was also verified that, in order for innovation environments to contribute to the economic sustainability of universities, university management should promote entrepreneurial culture, as well as have laws that streamline the innovation process, which intensify relations between innovation and university and who lead the triple propeller, having, above all else, to educate, research and undertake.