Technology transfer offices as providers of science and technology entrepreneurship education

Universities show an increasing commitment to stimulate science- and technology-based entrepreneurship with the aim of contributing to societal and economic development. The provision of science and technology entrepreneurship education (STEE) and the operation of technology transfer offices (TTOs) share the objective of improving university capabilities and output in science-based entrepreneurship. The literature has addressed STEE initiatives and TTOs separately. This paper reports the first comprehensive study of TTO involvement in STEE. From a sample of 176 university TTOs across 28 European countries, we found that 71 percent of TTOs were involved in the provision of STEE. The extensive involvement in STEE indicates that TTOs play an active role in stimulating universities’ entrepreneurial capabilities beyond specific licensing and spin-off cases. We analyze how the characteristics of TTOs and universities potentially influence the scope of STEE involvement in terms of breadth of contents, target audiences and duration. We find that older, strategically autonomous TTOs that are located in universities attributing strong relevance to technology transfer activities are particularly active in STEE. The active role of TTOs in STEE has implications for understanding the entrepreneurship education ecosystem of universities and offers interesting opportunities for further research.