The Autonomous University of Barcelona (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, UAB), founded in 1968, is one of seven higher education institutions located in the metropolitan area of Barcelona.The location of the university in the heart of Catalonia is a significant advantage as it is one of Spain’s most dynamic and entrepreneurial regions. In 2012, despite the generally unfavourable economic situation in the country, the local business start-up rate increased by 4.9%, and for every business that closed down, on average, 6.5 new firms were founded. The UAB is Spain's leading higher education institution in the OS World University and the Times Higher Education rankings, and ranges within the 100 higher education institutions worldwide for social sciences.  It is one of the top 3 universities in Spain according to the 2013 ISI Ranking of Spanish Universities in scientific research. 

As a broad-based university, the UAB offers study programmes at bachelor, master and doctoral levels for approximately 40 000 students; it employs around 3 600 academic staff and 2 500 administrative staff. Twenty percent of its student body are incoming international students and seven percent of UAB students are participating in temporary study periods abroad; both figures have seen constant increase since 2008. 

The development path of the university has clearly been an entrepreneurial one. The UAB established itself as one of the leaders in Catalonia in attracting students and staff. It also successfully increased commitment from external private stakeholders, as the increasing share of private funding of the university budget shows. In order to meet current and future needs of the economy and the society, the core development aims of UAB are to advance quality in teaching and excellence in research ‘both nationally and internationally’, with a focus on nanoscience-nanotechnology and biotechnology-biomedicine, as well as developing effective third mission activities. 

The UAB is a key stakeholder of the Catalonian Knowledge Ecosystem, which involves the Generalitat de Catalunya, 11 local councils, research centres and institutes, R&D support organisations, incubators and business parks, firms, and all higher education institutions in the region. Such intensive development of knowledge exchange links has characterised the last two decades of UAB's institutional and organisational development across its three campuses: Bellaterra (main campus), Sabadell (Engineering, Business and Economics, Medicine), and Barcelona (Medicine in Sant Pau, Vall d'Hebron, and Hospital del Mar). Several rounds of surveys established the key priorities of knowledge exchange and contributed to the reflection of needs and expectations both from the UAB community and its partners. 

Innovative Features

• Organisational Capacity, People and Incentives

UAB's clear focus on promoting entrepreneurship has stimulated entrepreneurial behaviour both within the university community and beyond. In this sense, the university organisation has been designed to achieve the UAB’s core activities (teaching, research, and social commitment). Nonetheless, at the beginning of the UAB’s entrepreneurial transformation process, entrepreneurial faculty and students faced significant barriers, such as the negative attitudes towards entrepreneurship, culture and bureaucracy inside university. The UAB’s current strategy (mission, vision, activities) is oriented around integrating all the university structures towards entrepreneurship and particularly to developing a one-point location for all internal and external agents. In particular, the UAB’s strategy focused on: 

• the transference and fostering of the entrepreneurial culture (i.e., knowledge generation, dissemination, utilisation); 
• mobility and internationalisation to stimulate the entrepreneurial spirit (students and academics);
• integration of centres to attract foreign talent (reinforcing it via scholarships, grants, prizes, etc.);
• interaction with the environment (i.e., increasing the labour offers, attracting enterprises, etc.);

• the social model based on equal opportunities and care of the environment (i.e., renewal infrastructures); and
• adapting the teaching methodologies according to European standards. 

Since its establishment, the UAB has promoted a hybrid organisational structure (i.e., research centres and incubators in collaboration with public and private organisations), which fosters innovation and entrepreneurship at all university levels: amongst students, teaching staff and researchers. The UAB is well connected to its environment and strategically uses the labels UABSphere (Esfera UAB) and UABCEI, Campus of Excellence to guide its restructuring and knowledge exchange activities involving all UAB departments, science and technology services, research centres and institutes, the Science and Technology Park, and the UAB hospitals as well as all external partners within the Catalonian Knowledge Ecosystem. 

The organisational structure of the UAB is based on a combination of centralised and decentralised decision-making which are both influenced by the rector’s leadership style. Traditionally, UAB rectors have had a strong commitment to issues related to innovation, technology transfer, and entrepreneurship. The strong commitment of the rector and the university is clearly reflected in strategic plans and actions. Besides this, a certain degree of autonomy across the different organisational levels ensures the emergence of new initiatives. Examples are faculty initiatives to support entrepreneurial activity, such as professorships and chairs in entrepreneurship, students’ associations (like Junior Enterprise) and campus entrepreneur clubs. 

The development path of a broad pool of resources and capabilities

The UAB builds on a broad pool of resources and capabilities to sustain its entrepreneurial agenda. This includes human, financial and physical resources, social capital, status and prestige, and localisation. Their development can be described in three subsequent time stages from 1968-2004 (creation/early stage), 2005-2012 (growth stage), and since 2013 onwards (maturity stage). 

Table 1: The UAB’s resources and capabilities based on the entrepreneurial university’s evolutionary stage

Notes: TTO (technology transfer office), BCO (business creation office), EO (employment office), RP (research parks), and I (incubators)

Source: Authors.

A strategic approach to develop the human resource base

Especially in the early stage, the UAB leadership played a crucial role for the anchoring and the promotion of the entrepreneurial agenda. Their vision, attitudes and commitment have been the key elements which legitimised entrepreneurship within a public broad-based university. Dwelling on this, several initiatives paved the way to foster an entrepreneurial culture within the university community. The attraction of talented and motivated researchers, students and teaching staff has been a core objective from the start. To this end, strategic partnerships were formed with higher education institutions in the region and abroad. Localisation has been an important recruitment factor, which has been enhanced through the partnership with the City of Barcelona and other local governments. 

Today, strategic actions to develop UAB's human capital base follow three basic axes: (i) the consolidation of entrepreneurship, (ii) the attraction of young talents in research and teaching, and (iii) the recognition and reward of excellence in academic careers. Within this framework, the UAB developed a system of incentives and rewards to establish and nurture the institutional bonds. These rewards take the form of monetary and non-monetary benefits. Examples of the latter include monthly printed and online magazines and online posts on UAB's main website to communicate about the most important developments, individual and departmental achievements and events. This website is also a key channel to keep the UAB alumni community informed, spread information about academic start-ups and to promote the use of entrepreneurial role models. The UAB has also established a range of economic benefits to reward outstanding performance in relation to the entrepreneurial agenda, such as grants, bonus payments, competitions and prize monies. These incentives and rewards apply to excellence in teaching, research and third mission activities both at the individual and the department/unit levels. 

Financial resources

Financial resources (FR) have adopted a key role during each stage of the UAB’s entrepreneurial transformation. For example, at the beginning, the financial resources were obtained only by public funds from local, regional, national, and European governments. Therefore, a small percentage of UAB’s funding came from research contracts developed within industry. Table 2 shows the stable evolution of financial resources (i.e., total incomes from public funds such as government and the income obtained from private fund such as research agreements with industry). It is also important to mention that during the recession period, the funds suffer a slight decrease, especially during 2012. As a consequence, the UAB strategy was oriented to compete more aggressively for funding in order to gain a major distribution of funds and to optimize these resources within the university. 

Table 2: UAB financial resources

Source: UAB official documents.

The university also developed several methods of providing financial support for entrepreneurial initiatives developed by its university community (i.e. the creation of spinoffs, start-ups, etc.). In this sense, the UAB participated in the creation of financial networks of business angels, as well as attracting other types of foreign investment to ensure the viability of entrepreneurial projects and protect innovation. Good examples of these actions have been several agreements with other universities (i.e. Uniba Networks and Catalonian Universities Alliances). 

Building on social capital in development physical resources

Investing in physical resources is costly and time intensive. The UAB started investing in an infrastructure dedicated to the support of research, knowledge exchange and entrepreneurship in the early stages of its development path. Advancing the support offer did, however, require more than only investment in infrastructure. The social capital and network links of UAB, both in the territory and internationally, proved to be of crucial importance in defining distinct characteristics and in building synergies between the different business creation centres, technology transfer offices, incubation facilities and business parks around the UAB campuses. 

A long-term project with significant influence on UAB's entrepreneurial agenda is the Alba Synchroton/CELLS project [1], which dates back to the early 1990s. A synchrotron is an accelerator of electrons. The electrons are maintained in a circular ring by magnetic field and produce X-Rays tangentially to their trajectory. In 2013, the UAB, the UAB Research Park, and the Alba Synchrotron signed a collaboration agreement to promote the transfer and exchange of scientific knowledge among the three institutions and to strategically co-ordinate their internationalisation efforts related to research and education. 

Results/Achievements

Main challenges:  

 - Reconfiguration/adjustments in terms of organisational capacity, people, and incentives influenced by external conditions (financial crisis) without affecting the university’s trajectory and maturity strategy 

Main lessons learned:

- The importance of the strong commitment of leadership and governance to entrepreneurship and innovation (entrepreneurial mind-sets)

- The importance of building the university’s capabilities and funding resources (combining public and private sources)

- The regional effect produced by the status and prestige of the university (based on their outcomes: attracting talent, investment, etc.) 

Contact

David Urbano and Maribel Guerrero 

Business Economics Department, Autonomous University of Barcelona

david.urbano@uab.cat