University entrepreneurship in Brazil: panorama of the technological innovation centers of universities

Abstract

Purpose Universities, as providers of knowledge and technology, have a key role in society based on knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the technological innovation centers (TICs) of the federal universities of Minas Gerais, Brazil, verifying if federal institutions of higher education in the state are meeting the attributions outlined in the Innovation Act.

Design/methodology/approach In order to achieve the proposed objective, each one of the public and federal universities in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, was outlined as analysis units. The data sources used for this study are intrinsically secondary and were collected from the websites and TICs of each university.

Findings As a result, it was found that all universities have TICs, and are inserted into the State Intellectual Property Network. Those aspects show that the universities have been searching for structure themselves by the new entrepreneurial mission of today’s educational institutions.

Originality/value As noted in the literature, more research is needed to examine the efficiency and professionalism of TICs in the entrepreneurial activity of universities because the institutionalization of TICs is still recent and many TICs are currently in an improvement phase of their activities.