2.1.2. Demarcation PDF Print E-mail
 

This research exploits concepts from many disciplines in order to deal with the theme of knowledge entrepreneurship, technology and universities. During the advancement of the research several, sometimes very interesting, aspects were retained in order to be better focus on the core interest of the research. Hence, it is important to clarify what one can expect and what will be left out from the investigation and considerations presented in this research. The following aspects where purposely not considered:

The most important demarcation is needed to clarify that this research is not primarily interested in the exploration of how universities can engage in economic entrepreneurship. Hence, all questions related to commercialization, technology transfer, spin-off companies, etc., is recognized as an important, interesting and (when done wisely) very positive field of practice. However, in this research, all of these activities are only of secondary relevance. The primary interest remains discovering how to provide the perfect conditions in which a university may capitalize upon opportunities to creatively destruct knowledge service, thereby encouraging products that are continually sought though entrepreneurial projects.

Subsequently, the economic dimension of entrepreneurship in universities is not assessed. It is the aim of this research to develop and establish knowledge as a possible subject for entrepreneurship, and therefore the research only considers monetary resources as an enabler for knowledge entrepreneurship. This also results in the dedicated choice to use not economic, but rather philosophical, terminology and concepts in the description of the phenomena.

In addition, the cross-national comparative is a very interesting subject; however, given its complexity, it has been assessed to narrow the study’s focus to detail only differences between national infrastructure, governance, culture, etc. Therefore, national aspects are dealt with only in passing (in the form of rival explanations).

Education and research practices are less concerned about individual concrete practice, rather emphasizing the meta-practice of how to prepare and innovate as an educator and researcher. This meta-practice again contains a large variety of knowledge based opportunities, the most obvious being innovating, concrete research as well as a teaching/learning practice. In addition, the pursuit of innovative knowledge subjects, such as the new phenomena of “knowledge entrepreneurship” itself, or even the innovation of the knowledge system through a simplified and/or more improved structure. None of these knowledge subjects are investigated in detail, rather they are all understood as one (Kantian) category of knowledge entrepreneurship opportunities. Opportunities to improve the practice of teaching and learning through internet based (e-learning) innovations is taken as focus, simply because it is a vibrant field of creative practice destruction.

The research uses the appropriation of ”internet based innovations” as an example of knowledge entrepreneurship. Thereby, it is important to point out that the entity and features of these technologies is neither problematic nor considered. A non-critical stance is taken and it is assumed that the examples examined have the potential to improve knowledge services and knowledge production.

Technology is used throughout this work in its widest sense, as in technique, its applications, and the artifacts that are deployed as tools. This is what Heidegger entitled Gestell. While specific internet based technologies are taken as examples, it is not their technological features that are of interest to this study. Rather, it is the focus of the study to the possibility of enabling knowledge entrepreneurship and the gestell of the organization to be an important factor. Hence, the general components of the gestell are described. An essential differentiation made is between technology as a means (gestell) and the organization’s or individual’s humanistic ends. The research is interested in technology as “technology,” but also about technology as a knowledge system on an abstract level. (There is no evaluation of technologies or exploration of how they work.) The research cannot discuss in profound depth the possible implementation of the knowledge entrepreneurship concept, as it gives a theoretic proposition. It is not a “how to,” nor does it delve into why the strange attractors are this way . Rather, it presents a pragmatic study interested in what works and, as such, it identified from the indefinite (Kantian) categories of entities a number that has been found to have decisive influence on (knowledge) entrepreneurship. Both questions are surely interesting grounds for further research.

Put differently, the research is not about invention nor innovation as in creating something for the first time world-wide, but about local innovation or innovation appropriation. While in some instances (research and e-learning tool development) also the former type of innovation is described, most knowledge entrepreneurship has to do with appropriating knowledge opportunities that are already developed by someone else, elsewhere.

Lastly it describes the relations between the attractors only a limited degree as they share the characteristic of being essential elements for the composition of an knowledge entrepreneurial mindset and infrastructure (gestell).


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