All case-study universities have developed entrepreneurship activities. These universities have, to varying degrees, embedded entrepreneurship across their educational programmes, their strategies, governance and organisation, in the system of incentives offered to faculty, staff and students, and in the way, they cooperate with external stakeholders, including businesses and local governments.

While largely still nested in business and engineering schools, entrepreneurship education courses are becoming popular across different faculties, with some universities setting mandatory entrepreneurship courses for students across a number of disciplines.  Entrepreneurship education is also delivered through extracurricular activities (hackathons, entrepreneurship contests, fairs, festivals) and internships, allowing flexibility and promoting interaction with external stakeholders in particular, with businesses of all sizes and levels of maturity.

There is a variety of approaches to the delivery of entrepreneurship education. In some of the universities studied, courses to help students develop a business idea are prevalent. For example, there are specific courses for science and engineering students, as well as PhD students, as a means to bridge science and research with the business world. In other case studies, entrepreneurship education goes beyond the creation of start-ups and spin-offs and the aim is to empower and stimulate students from all disciplines to acquire a growth-oriented, risk-taking mind-set that prepares them to become leaders of the future. Regardless of their approaches, all case-study universities were able to continue delivering their entrepreneurship education activities (including incubation and acceleration) during the pandemic by digitalising teaching and learning activities.

The review found that most case-study universities are becoming entrepreneurial hubs supporting innovation in their ecosystems. Many are host to accelerators, incubators, centres for entrepreneurship and innovation open to external stakeholders such as entrepreneurs and SMEs. In addition, many universities take advantage of their multi-campus strategy to amplify their impact and engagement. Multi-locality allows them to connect with a broader variety of actors including local governments and business communities. In some of the countries studied, local governments try to attract a campus of an entrepreneurial university as a way to promote innovation and jobs.

Most universities in this report centred their collaboration activities towards their surrounding communities, by building bridges with local entrepreneurs, SMEs, research institutes, and NGOs. HEIs in Brazil and Colombia are intensifying efforts to support innovation, by providing dedicated entrepreneurship training to researchers or conducting cross-disciplinary research to respond to challenges faced by external stakeholders. Multi-campus universities in countries such as Mexico and Uruguay have implemented a “decentralised” system, which allows each campus the flexibility to engage with local constituents. Several universities are collaborating with public authorities and NGOs to address the social challenges of their local communities (particularly prevalent in Chile and Argentina). The review also revealed challenges for case-study universities including unfavourable intellectual property regulations at the university level or at the national level that limit the capacity to patent innovation. Interviews with participants did not; explore however, the degree to which research produced had the potential to be patented, which could be examined in future studies.

Based on information collected in interviews and through desk research, the review provides the following recommendations to strengthen linkages between entrepreneurial HEIs and their regional ecosystems.

Increase awareness of good practices and establish continental networks among different HEIs to support mutual learning. Universities should connect with other Latin American universities to share best practices on how they entrepreneurship mainstreaming helps them connect with their communities, including businesses and civil society.

The legal framework to regulate intellectual property should be improved at a national level and at the university level. Technological transfer offices are understaffed and would particularly benefit from legal advice offering support for patent creation and licensing.

Universities should allocate more funding to support entrepreneurial activities and knowledge exchange and collaboration. A sustainable funding stream to maintain incubation or acceleration activities is a necessity in most cases. Sustainability and predictability of resources will also allow the creation of specialised professional skills connected to entrepreneurship (education and support). Improved access to seed funding can help. Venture capital funds, which are relatively more common, tend to offer support to start-ups that already have an effective business model. A larger venture capital system in Latin America could cover the full spectrum of needs of academic entrepreneurs at different stages of the development of their business idea. Concerning knowledge exchange and collaboration, more stable and predictable funding would also allow long-term collaborative projects with stakeholders, including firms of all size and maturity levels.

Develop a system of evaluation of impact, both at the national and regional level. This is an essential learning instrument to understand how to improve the performance of entrepreneurial universities in terms of knowledge exchange, and entrepreneurship support but also serves as a tracker that can unlock access to finance. Most universities are measuring their knowledge exchange activities using knowledge performance output-based indicators, such as number of patents, number of licenses, and number of spin-offs. Yet universities reported that a lack of a national evaluation framework on knowledge exchange hindered their ability to use harmonised indicators at a country level.