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Universities and Regional Innovation in the Central- and Eastern European Context—A Hungarian Case

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European Perspectives on Innovation Management

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Abstract

Universities became inevitable actors in regional innovation in the past almost half a century. On the one hand, they are an important source of knowledge that led to success stories both in technological and geographic sense. On the other hand, significant differences have been observed in the capacities and capabilities of universities to transfer their knowledge into wealth generating products and services, and to enhance the advancement of their region. One of the relatively recent policy concepts that strongly relies on universities’ contribution is the regional innovation strategy for smart specialization (RIS3) that aims to spur the development of regions from the highly lagging to the most advanced ones. One of the central elements of the concept is the entrepreneurial discovery process that immanently necessitates the presence of an entrepreneurial mindset and culture in the region. Consequently, in our view one of the most important of the many contributions of universities to the design and implementation of RIS3 is the creation of an entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports entrepreneurial thinking and acting within the region. In this chapter, we applied the university centered entrepreneurial ecosystem approach for a large, comprehensive university in a lagging region to analyze the role that the university can play in smart specialization by develo** an entrepreneurial mindset and ecosystem. We found that the elements of the puzzle are on the table, but owing to the insufficient connection of the elements there is a suboptimal outcome of the ecosystem. Areas for improvement are also addressed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://enoll.org/about-us/ (Accessed: 31.05.2023).

  2. 2.

    https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/regional-innovation-monitor/base-profile/south-transdanubia (03.09.2020).

  3. 3.

    Also another university, University of Kaposvár is located in the region, but we restrict our analysis to the University of Pécs, because that is the home of the Simonyi Business and Economic Development Centre (BEDC).

  4. 4.

    Faculty of Law, Medical School, Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Health Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Education and Regional Development, Faculty of Business and Economics, Faculty of Music and Visual Arts, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, Faculty of Sciences (https://pte.hu/english/faculties, accessed: 17.05.2018).

  5. 5.

    UP employment data.

  6. 6.

    https://innovacio.pte.hu/en/content/research_and_innovation_university_pecs (03.09.2020).

  7. 7.

    UP facts and statistics https://adminisztracio.pte.hu/sites/adminisztracio.pte.hu/files/files/Egyetemunk/Tenyek_adatok/Statisztikak/pte-osapkivonat-2018-oktober.pdf (Accessed: 10.05.2021).

  8. 8.

    https://startup.hiventures.hu/en (Accessed: 28.06.2023).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to Evelyn Calispa for her invaluable support in compiling the figures and the references.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics and Econometrics, RIERC, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary

    Katalin Erdős

  2. Faculty of Business and Economics, Center for Applied Learning, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary

    Zsolt Bedő

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  1. Katalin Erdős
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Correspondence to Katalin Erdős .

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  1. Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Rob Dekkers

  2. ERPI Laboratory, University of Lorraine, Nancy, France

    Laure Morel

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Erdős, K., Bedő, Z. (2024). Universities and Regional Innovation in the Central- and Eastern European Context—A Hungarian Case. In: Dekkers, R., Morel, L. (eds) European Perspectives on Innovation Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41796-2_15

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