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Valorization of research results is becoming increasingly important today. Since academic research should not only contribute to our “quest for fundamental understanding,” but it also needs to “consider use” (Stokes, 1997); these dual goals give rise to tension in academic institutes that need to carefully balance research and its exploitation (Ambos, Mäkelä, Birkenshaw, & D’ Este, 2008). Nevertheless, valorization, commercialization, technology transfer, knowledge exploitation or exploitation of research are different labels for a similar activity and have become part and parcel of academic life. Most universities own the intellectual property rights of their research, meaning they have the legal rights (in some countries the legal obligation) to exploit it in a way they see fit. Research (e.g., Van der Heide, S., Van der Sijde, P. & Terlouw, C. (2010). Exploring ‘transnational’ university cooperation in technology transfer: A European perspective. Industry & Higher Education, 24(1), 17–27) shows that universities have different objectives (e.g. regional development, spin-off creation) for engaging in this process and every university has developed its own approach to deal with this in the sense of funding and support. On an abstract level, there are two scenarios for commercialization (Derksen, J. T. P. (2000). De Ondernemende Onderzoeker: Paradox of Pleonasme [The entrepreneurial researcher: Paradox or pleonasm]. Nijmegen: UBC). In the first scenario the university takes the role of “entrepreneur” and in the second scenario it is the researcher (or the research group) who is involved in research that takes this role with the university being the context in which entrepreneurship takes place. In this contribution our focus is on the university as entrepreneur and we regard valorization as an entrepreneurial process. In order to visualize how the activities of different actors associated with the university contribute to the entrepreneurial process of a university, we will build on ideas postulated by Wakkee and Van der Sijde (2010) regarding the fluid and moldable nature of opportunities. We conceptually elaborate the consequences of their approach for bringing knowledge (and technology) from university to the market.

Over many years people have tried to understand the entrepreneurial process (e.g., Hayek, 1945; Kirzner, 1973; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Schumpeter, 1934). Van der Veen and Wakkee (2004) reviewed the literature and introduced the role of the entrepreneur and the environment in this process. An environment can have two roles: as a stimulus for opportunity (Burt, 1992; Gaglio, 1997; Shane, 2000; Vesper, 1989), and as a resource for pursuing that opportunity (Brush, Greene, & Hart, 2001). The view emerging from the research by Shane and Venkataraman (2000) and Van der Veen and Wakkee (2004), is that the entrepreneurial process is not merely a series of decisions, but more a sequence of events the entrepreneur goes through as a result of the environment and previous actions taken.

The so-called ‘Third Mission’ of the university is under debate for the last 20–30 years (Laredo, 2007) and this mission has received a wide variety of interpretations. In this chapter we adhere to execution of activities that contribute to the economic and social development of its territory. This new idea of the university as an entrepreneurial one requires a reorientation of its strategy to cope with the challenges imposed by its new task towards society. In this sense, the Entrepreneurship Support Programmes (ESPs), as university services, are a central element in the fulfilment of the aims and objectives of any entrepreneurial university, as those that combine and integrate the traditional activities of education and research with the contribution to the economic and social development (Etzkowitz, 1998; Goddard, 1998). The ESP services consist, for example, of programmes that promote entrepreneurship in all the fields; they support the creation of new innovative companies with a scientific or technologic base; they support the development of university spin-off and training related to the creation and management of companies; and they promote university–company relationship and interaction between other factors (Arroyo-Vázquez & van der Sijde, 2008). The reorientation of the strategy of the university into an entrepreneurial one involves also a strategy with regard to the university's ‘entrepreneurial’ services, which have to adapt to the new demands and needs of the university's ‘new’ users, entrepreneurs and companies as well as university staff members.

This chapter explores emerging concerns and issues of University and Business Co-operation (UBC) at Indonesian universities. Over decades, the Indonesian government has been implemented policies and strategies to stimulate collaboration between universities and business by offering them a variety of funding schemes. It has been aimed to foster innovation and to reach the government ambition, to make Indonesia as a country in the innovation-driven economy by 2020. Our study was based on a desk evaluation and the secondary data. We collected and examined documents of the governmental policies, universities’ strategies, relevant UBC articles, etc. in order to get an overview of UBC in Indonesia. Our findings suggests that the participation rate of universities and academics in UBC, especially with those funded by the government, remains low. The government expected more participation by offering more funds; however, it was not successfully achieved. We conclude that to increase the participation of universities and academics in UBC, they need to resolve the different institutional logics with their business counterparts.

University business incubators (UBIs) are born as tools of the academic world to market research results, for the transfer of technology and to promote entrepreneurial spirit. In these contexts, the exchange of knowledge among entrepreneurs can be a key variable for the development and success of their businesses. This paper aims to analyse the characteristics of entrepreneurs' resources and the institutional logic that prevails in the incubator as determinants of the exchange of knowledge, and the authors examine the results in terms of entrepreneurial commitment and the generation of innovations.

The empirical study carried out on a sample of 101 entrepreneurs in UBIs in Spain and The Netherlands.

The results reveals how complementarity, supplementarity and transferability of resources, as well as incubator predisposition towards business are fundamental for the exchange of knowledge, the development of entrepreneurial spirit and the generation of innovation.

This study makes a contribution towards an understanding of how relationships between university entrepreneurs provide access to and help create useful knowledge for the parties, with this resource constituting one possible source of sustainable competitive advantage.

The founder of paperbackswap.com, Bobby Swarthout, developed the idea for his venture while he was a college student. As a student on a limited budget, he had become tired of paying high prices for textbooks. So he developed and launched an online textbook swapping service. Along with a small group of students, he managed to assemble a group of 12 colleges and universities across the United States to participate in textbook swapping. However, after a few months, very few students had used the site. By listening to the potential customers who chose not to participate, Bobby found out that there were too many easy substitutes for the swapping service (e.g. bookstore returns, half.com, efollett, etc.). These alternatives offered either greater convenience or cash in return for used books (especially appealing to students who did not pay for their books themselves), or other appealing features. However, Mr. Swarthout believed in his concept and also listened to the ‘voice-of-the-consumer’ (VOC) and moved his business idea into different consumer/product space: that of paperback books. Along with a few lead users attracted to his original idea, he refined the original idea, gathered resources (an angel who invested in the business) and added technological capabilities. One year later he launched paperbackswap.com. From inception, the firm embraced the VOC as the key tool in driving product development and improvement efforts. For paperbackswap.com listening to the VOC has become part of a closed-loop system where inputs from consumers are analysed and product improvements developed in response and where the loop is closed by listening to how consumers respond to product changes.