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Frugal innovation has gained prominence based on its potential contribution to sustainable development and the new opportunities that it offers to low-income customers. This paper aims to analyse the strategic knowledge transfer practices implemented by an entrepreneurial university for fostering frugal innovations within an emerging economy.

This study adopted a case study methodological approach. The selected case was the University of Campinas (Unicamp), one of the leading universities in Brazil in terms of research quality and technology transfer. The study built upon 14 interviews with key informants and secondary sources of data (official and public documents).

The findings highlight the multidimensional dynamics of frugal innovations arising from university–industry relationships. Key dimensions considered include the internal capabilities of universities to foster frugal innovations and connect them to markets, the surrounding innovation ecosystems in which the university is embedded and the overarching institutional framework.

The analysis of strategic management practices for frugal innovation requires an evolutionary perspective, but the findings lacked sufficient longitudinal information for a formal evaluation. Also, as our empirical analysis is based on an in-depth case study of one university, further validation in other contexts would be necessary.

This study offers new insights regarding the effectiveness of university-business collaboration partnerships for developing frugal innovations in emerging economies. Policymakers should promote societal programs enhancing the active participation of all agents involved in the entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem. University managers should understand the challenges and the opportunities behind the adoption of an inclusive and societal orientation.

By adopting frugal innovation practices, universities can enhance their contribution of meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

The literature on frugal innovation has emphasized the importance of networking between different types of firms, NGOs and governments, but the role of universities in frugal innovation remains mostly unexplored. This study addresses this gap by exploring how entrepreneurial universities participate in frugal innovations to meet societal challenges.

This study aims to understand the impact of student entrepreneurship and university support on faculty intrapreneurship. The authors also analyze the role of the university’s dynamic and ordinary capabilities and the environmental dynamism in which the university is embedded.

With a large survey data set involving 680 professors and 2,230 students from 70 Brazilian universities, the authors use a multimethod approach with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The PLS-SEM results demonstrate that student entrepreneurship indirectly influences faculty intrapreneurship through the interaction of students with faculty and entrepreneurs, in addition to proving the intense influence of university support on faculty intrapreneurship, especially in a slow-growth environment. Additionally, the authors confirmed the moderating effect of universities’ dynamic and ordinary capabilities on student interaction and university support, respectively, and some exciting differences considering the ecosystem dynamism. The fsQCA results deepened the differences between environments, presenting different configurations between the antecedents that lead to high levels of faculty intrapreneurship in fast and slow-growth environments.

The study makes a unique and significant contribution to the literature on faculty intrapreneurship by examining the cross-interactions between individual, organizational and environmental levels about the promotion of faculty intrapreneurship. From a practical point of view, it is possible to identify more effective, innovative and systematic ways to encourage faculty intrapreneurship in a developing country. The findings help open up the black box of faculty intrapreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze this phenomenon and identify its determinants using data from Brazilian higher education institutions.

Based on a data set comprehending 2,230 university students from 70 different institutions across the country, the authors develop five Probit models to assess impacts related to individual traits and systemic conditions on five dependent dimensions: entrepreneurial activity, potential entrepreneurs, high-impact entrepreneurship, serial entrepreneurship and innovation-driven entrepreneurship.

The lack of significance in many of the variables included in estimations suggests that student entrepreneurship seems to be a rather random phenomenon in Brazil.

Findings pose challenges for student entrepreneurship, as targets for intervention are not clear.

Over the past decades, universities have been receiving an increasing demand to go beyond their role of producing science and technology to explore its knowledge potential to produce novel commercial applications. However, while there is a growing interest in ways to foster scientific academic entrepreneurship, universities also serve as a positive environment for student entrepreneurship training, knowledge sharing, testing ideas and learning. So far, the importance of student entrepreneurship has received far less attention than it likely deserves.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new typology to leverage the different knowledge gaps existing between universities and industries. This new typology classifies interactions into training-oriented, diffusion-oriented, service-oriented, development-oriented, and research-oriented.

The Brazilian 2010 Census data available from the CNPq Research Group Directory were used to test the typology.

It was found that, among the five types of interactions proposed, the most frequent were the development-oriented (39 per cent), diffusion-oriented (23 per cent), and research-oriented (16 per cent) ones. These findings indicate that it is likely that university-industry (U-I) interactions have improved in terms of quality in an attempt to attain a joint higher technological development.

The paper provides the U-I interaction debate with a new perspective about the kinds of interactions that could effectively bridge the knowledge gaps between universities and industries, especially in a developing country context.

Este artigo propõe uma nova metodologia para reduzir as diferentes lacunas em termos de conhecimento existentes entre universidades e empresas. Esta nova tipologia classifica as interações em formadora, difusora, financiadora, desenvolvedora e pesquisadora.

O Censo de 2010 disponibilizado pelo Diretório de Grupos de Pesquisa do CNPq foi utilizado para testar a tipologia proposta.

Verificou-se que, entre os cinco tipos de interação propostos, os mais frequentes foram as tipologias desenvolvedora (39%), difusora (23%) e pesquisadora (16%). Esses resultados indicam uma provável qualificação das interações universidade-empresa justamente com o objetivo de alcançar um desenvolvimento tecnológico conjunto superior.

O artigo contribui com o debate sobre interação universidade-empresa, propondo uma nova perspectiva sobre os tipos de interação que efetivamente podem preencher as lacunas em termos de conhecimento existente entre universidades e empresas, especialmente no contexto dos países em desenvolvimento.

The innovation process demands an interaction between environment agents, knowledge generators and policies of incentive for innovation and not only development by companies. Universities have gradually become the core of the knowledge production system and, therefore, their role regarding innovation has become more important and diversified. This study is aimed at identifying the mechanisms of university–industry (U–I) collaboration, as well as the operationalization steps of the U–I collaboration process.

This study is aimed at identifying, based on a systematic literature review, the mechanisms of university–industry (U–I) collaboration, as well as the operationalization steps of the U–I collaboration process.

The analysis of the 72 selected articles enabled identifying 15 mechanisms of U–I collaboration, proposing a new classification for such mechanisms and developing a framework presenting the operationalization steps of the interaction process.

In this paper, the authors screened nearly 1,500 papers and analyzed in detail 86 papers addressing U–I collaboration, mechanisms of U–I collaboration and operationalization steps of the U–I collaboration process. This paper provides a new classification for such mechanisms and developing a framework presenting the operationalization steps of the interaction process. This research contributes to both theory and practice by highlighting managerial aspects and stimulating academic research on such timely topic.

In the era of the digital economy, higher demands are placed on versatile talents, and the cultivation of students with innovative and entrepreneurial abilities has become an important issue for the further development of higher education, thus leading to extensive and in-depth research by many scholars. The study summarizes the characteristics and patterns of dual-innovation education at different stages of development, hoping to provide a systematic model for the development of dual-innovation education in China and make up for the shortcomings.

This paper uses Citespace software to visualize and analyze the relevant literature in CNKI and Web of Science databases from a bibliometric perspective, focusing on quantitative analysis in terms of article trends, topic clustering, keyword co-linear networks and topic time evolution, etc., to summarize and sort out the development of innovation and entrepreneurship education research at home and abroad.

The study found that the external characteristics of the literature published in the field of bi-innovation education in China and abroad are slightly different, mainly in that foreign publishers are more closely connected and have formed a more stable ecosystem. In terms of research hotspots, China is still in a critical period of reforming its curriculum and teaching model, and research on the integration of specialization and creative education is in full swing, while foreign countries focus more on the cultivation of students' entrepreneurial awareness and the enhancement of individual effectiveness. In terms of cutting-edge analysis, the main research directions in China are “creative education”, “new engineering”, “integration of industry and education” and “rural revitalization”.

Innovation and entrepreneurship education in China is still in its infancy, and most of the studies lack an overall overview and comparison of foreign studies. Based on the econometric analysis of domestic and foreign literature, this paper proposes a path for domestic innovation and entrepreneurship education reform that can make China's future education reform more effective.