Measuring the Entrepreneurial Orientation of Public Research Centers

Abstract

This paper presents the initial results of a project to investigate the organizational antecedents of entrepreneurship at public research and technology institutions (RTIs) in Iran. In line with the policies of the government to increase the role of publicly funded R&D in solving the problems of domestic industry, the research centers within public RTIs are encouraged to direct their research efforts towards practical applications, thus creating value from their R&D efforts. We chose to utilize a widely-used construct from corporate entrepreneurship literature (Entrepreneurial Orientation, EO) to explain undeniable differences among these research centers in their success in academic entrepreneurship. Noting that EO is a context-sensitive construct, the items to measure EO in research centers were generated by in-depth interviews; and the relationship between the contextualized EO and financial performances of research centers was investigated. The results confirmed a notable association between the EO level of research centers and their financial performance.