Linking the performance of entrepreneurial universities to technoparks and university characteristics in turkey

Universities’ third mission of knowledge commercialization imposes them a core role towards becoming entrepreneurial universities in the triple helix interacting with the government and industry. Entrepreneurial universities have crucial functions of providing entrepreneurial support infrastructure for innovation and engaging in the regional economy. Technoparks, in that sense, form an essential channel for universities to disseminate and commercialize the knowledge considering their geographical proximity and facilitating mechanisms. Measuring the performances of entrepreneurial universities and technoparks in quantitative metrics have been initiated by different government agencies in Turkey, which resulted in two different indices. The Most Entrepreneurial and Innovative University Index and the Performance Index for Technoparks track performances annually. Using the data provided by the two indices, this study explores how the technoparks’ performance can be linked to the universities’ scores in entrepreneurship and innovation, along with some university-specific characteristics and their interactions. The geographical proximity provided by the technoparks contributes to the performance of entrepreneurial universities. While the increasing university size has a negative effect on university entrepreneurial scores, the socio-economic development factor of the region positively contributes to the scores. Young universities are also found to benefit more from the large share of the graduate students of their student composition on university entrepreneurship and innovation scores.