A Performance Measurement Systems for Academic entrepreneurship: a case study

Purpose – This paper aims at proposing a performance measurement system (PMS) for technology-intensive academic entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach – The PMS has been developed through action research carried out within an Italian higher education and research centre, on the basis of the literature background and interviews. Findings – The study presents a new PMS based on an Input-Output model for technology-intensive academic entrepreneurship. As a result, a multidimensional framework for measuring entrepreneurship is proposed together with a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to assess the “third mission” of universities. The application of the framework allows to demonstrate its validity in a public setting. Practical implications – This study contributes to the extant literature on performance measurement of entrepreneurship process within research and higher education institutes, that is traditionally focused at the firm level. From a practitioner perspective, the model can be used both by universities which are interested in measuring their entrepreneurial capital, and by other stakeholders which are interested in evaluating the value generation performances of universities. Originality/value – The PMS is developed according to a process-oriented perspective of the academic entrepreneurship by identifying, for each step, a set of KPIs to meet the information needs of different stakeholders. The proposed PMS allows monitoring each phase of the technology entrepreneurship and managing the results in terms of social and economic impact developed.