Universities are increasingly viewed as critical instigators and accelerators of regional economic development (Audretsch, 2007), and universities are playing an ever greater role in communities as catalysts for venture creation. In this chapter, we will demonstrate how one university, the University of Central Florida (UCF), is a partner in the local economic development agenda in a number of ways that range from academic to very practitioner based activities.
Academically, the University of Central Florida offers undergraduate and graduate tracks in entrepreneurship, and has established the UCF Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation on its main campus to strengthen the development of the entrepreneurial spirit; on the practitioner front, the University has helped to found several entrepreneurial support entities.
Knowledge transfer from universities to the wider public is an extremely important and complex process. Ideas and knowledge from a university or the community at large do not benefit society or produce economic development if they are not transferred to the commercial marketplace. The environment that surrounds the commercialization process through spin-offs or traditional licensing of a technology affects the efficacy of the process and the overall results. To increase the local environment’s effectiveness an area should develop resources that focus on the growth of companies and entrepreneurial centered development. Entrepreneurial entities such as the UCF Venture lab, the National Entrepreneur Center, the UCF Business Incubation Program and the Florida Economic Gardening Institute’s GrowFL Program support entrepreneurship and commercialization positively, and affect the community’s capacity to effectively commercialize technology and launch new ventures. An all-encompassing model for the knowledge transfer process in the innovation ecosystem is presented in figure 3 in the section: Background. This model supports the importance of focusing on solid research for continuous improvement of a university’s academic programs by attracting the most talented students and faculty, to ensure continued high quality of research and education.
Model of knowledge transfer within the innovation ecosystem (Library House, 2008)
The suite of ESEs at UCF provides entrepreneurial help targeting entrepreneurs with ideas and companies at various stages. The stage definition given by the Edward Lowe Foundation on their website www.youreconomy.org is useful to understand the effort. Stage 0 companies are defined as entrepreneurs being in the idea phase or in the company incorporation phase, and all the way up to Stage 2 - the time when the company has more than 7-10 employees and more than $1 million in revenue. More details regarding the Stage definitions will be given later in this Chapter.