A RESEARCH METHODOLOGY TO INVESTIGATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENTREPRENEURIAL UNIVERSITY CONCEPT

Although the entrepreneurial university concept raised a lot in debates in the last 10 years, the subject it is still not on the "front page" of Romanian academics. The last years financial crisis imposed new funding priorities for the governments. All over the world, universities and HE institutions are demanded to find new ways to increase income and financial independence, which could be translated as a potential focus to entrepreneurship and a more entrepreneurial behaviour for this very traditional and conservative institutions. The aim of this paper is to highlight the steps of a research methodology for the investigation of the entrepreneurial university field. Burton's Clark studies, the Triple Helix Model imposed by Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz as well as the literature review written by Frank Rothaermel et al., are considered, mainly as frameworks for the development of the research on the entrepreneurial university. For our research, a large international research database (www.b-on.pt), giving access to more then 17.000 worldwide resources was investigated in July and August 2012 in order to select the most relevant papers and articles published in the field of entrepreneurial university in the last 7 years (01.01.2006 - 15.07.2012). Ten different keywords from a list with 35 were used to select the most important paper works. The selection results brought us 140 papers and articles on the entrepreneurial university, found on the mentioned database and other 42 selected from international scientific journals belonging to the field of entrepreneurship. The results are showing new research approaches on the entrepreneurial university field. Further research pathways are proposed, leading to a new possible extensive literature review of the entrepreneurial university issues in the last seven years.