Development of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem through University’s New Companies

Research Question: This paper explores the potential of new start-ups and spin-offs within the university capacity and their impact on the process of creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Motivation: The research presented in this paper is motivated by the desire to analyse the role of university in entrepreneurial ecosystem based on the real case of the University of Novi Sad. An insight into relevant literature sources revealed that there exists a large influence of university’s new companies in developing the entire business environment and business sustainability. This example could be relevant to similar universities in the other developing countries, because current literature covers only examples from developed countries. One of this is a research paper conducted by the Stanford University under the name “An analysis of the entrepreneurial activity of the Stanford community over 50 years”. Idea: The main idea is to present the importance of University’s new companies in creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem, and their impact on the creation of economic activity and sustainable development. Data: This research includes economic activity data of business entities at the University of Novi Sad. This paper presents data on new companies within the University of Novi Sad in the period 1990-2015 which were available, as well as data on companies in the territory of the Republic of Serbia, Vojvodina region and the City of Novi Sad. In this analysis, 123 companies from the University of Novi Sad were included. Tools: In this paper comparative statistics was used based on collected data of the total number of companies and the number of employees according to company’s size and geographical location. For the purpose of this research, we used interactive internet portals Trading Economics and IvanStat. Findings: According to the analysis, the University of Novi Sad is a prominent example of the establishment and operation of new companies founded within it. The percentage of companies that have survived in the observed period is high and it is approximately 63%. Contribution: This paper gives us an overview of newly founded companies (start-ups and spin-offs) within the University of Novi Sad, especially focusing on economic activity and creating conditions for sustainable development.