Today’s digital technologies, such as social media, business analytics, the Internet of Things, big data, advanced manufacturing, 3D printing, cloud and cyber-solutions and MOOCs, permeate every private and public organization. However, even if this phenomenon has been analyzed for entrepreneurship in general, to the best of our knowledge, the impact of digital technologies on academic entrepreneurship remains not only slightly addressed. With the aim of filling this gap, this paper proposes a novel contribution regarding the emerging concept of Digital Academic Entrepreneurship. Based on a qualitative literature review, an interpretative framework for Digital Academic Entrepreneurship is deductively proposed that is composed of the following components: the rationale for the adoption of digital technologies for academic entrepreneurship (why), the emerging forms of digital academic entrepreneurship (what), the stakeholders involved through the digital technologies to achieve the academic entrepreneurship goal (who), and the processes of academic entrepreneurship supported by digital technologies (how). The discussion section provides a conceptualization of Digital Academic Entrepreneurship. The paper closes with the identification of a research agenda for this promising and under-researched field.

Introduction

Universities in developed countries have become increasingly entrepreneurial (Mowery and Sampat, 2005; Siegel, 2006). In the early 1980s, the entrepreneurial university become an accepted concept, and the literature debating the role of higher education institutions in economic growth and social development raised the attention of prominent scholars (Clark, 1998; Etzkowitz, 1983; Gibb and Hannon, 2006; Guerrero et al., 2016; Klofsten and Jones-Evans, 2000; Röpke, 1998). Studies have shown that, over time, the regional impact of universities on new business creation, knowledge transfer, and influx of well-educated people is considerable (Etzkowitz and Klofsten, 2005). Various activities, such as research collaborations with industry, patent applications, idea spinoffs into new firms, entrepreneurial education of highly skilled individuals and business incubators, are the tools universities use to achieve their entrepreneurial configuration (Shane, 2004; Siegel and Wright, 2015; Somsuk and Laosirihongthong, 2014). These activities are known as academic entrepreneurship (Grimaldi et al., 2011; O’Shea et al., 2004; Rasmussen, 2011; Rothaermel et al., 2007; Shane, 2004; Wright, 2007). Academic entrepreneurship has attracted major attention both within the academic literature and in the policy community where it is considered to be an important element in the movement to become a knowledge society (Audretsch and Kayalar-Erdem, 2005; Davey et al., 2016; Rothaermel et al., 2007). An increase in university licensing, patenting and start-up creation has also been observed in many countries, starting in the USA with the Bayh-Dole Act and moving to Europe and Asia as well as Australia, Canada and Israel (Grimaldi et al., 2011), where the study of academic entrepreneurship has received increasing attention (e.g., Chrisman et al., 1995; Zucker et al., 2002). Moreover in parallel to the evolution of academic entrepreneurship, another interesting phenomenon is the rapid acceleration of digital technologies that in the past 10 years are reshaping the markets and society globally (Nambisan et al., 2017). The digital technologies of today, such as social media, mobile, business analytics, the Internet of Things, big data, advanced manufacturing, 3D printing, cloud and cyber-solutions, MOOCs, artificial intelligence, permeate every organization, manufacturer and service as well as private and public organizations (Fischer and Reuber, 2011; Fitzgerald et al., 2014; Greenstein et al., 2013). This wave of digital technology enables the departure from established systems of production and opens new channels and connections to markets, users and other stakeholders (Abernathy and Clark, 1985).