Abstract:

Academic entrepreneurship, which is seen as one of the main drivers of economic, technological and social change, is seen as an important element of achieving the public goals set at the national and regional development level. The increase in the interaction between universities and industry has allowed the commercialization of academic knowledge, in other words, the development of academic entrepreneurship. In this context, the aim of the research is to examine how the phenomenon of academic entrepreneurship is realized in practice with an emic approach. Within the scope of the qualitative study, in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 academic entrepreneurs and discourse analysis was carried out in line with the data obtained. According to the results of the research, it is seen that academic entrepreneurs mostly have motivations for the transformation of scientific knowledge into a product. The activities carried out generally focus on science projects and consultancy. The most prominent themes among the problems faced by academic entrepreneurs are bureaucratic obstacles and administrative/organizational problems. It is anticipated that the study will contribute to filling the gap in the national literature in terms of being a descriptive study on academic entrepreneurship in Turkey. It is hoped that the results obtained will guide policy makers while taking steps to develop academic entrepreneurship in the future.

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