Universities’ Entrepreneurship Education and Regional Development: a Stakeholders’ Approach

It is assumed that entrepreneurship education encourage the growth of new businesses, exploiting the entrepreneurial spirit within higher education sector. Additionally, entrepreneurship higher education is supposed to play a relevant role in the development of enterprising citizens and in the development regions through an ongoing process of knowledge creation and delivery. In this research we will explore what roles are attributed to entrepreneurship education in the literature with regard to regional development as well as the influence and relationship of the main intervening stakeholders. The aim is to present a conceptual model which integrate the contributions of both strands of literature and, at the same time, highlight the interplay between the several stakeholders involved in HEI’s entrepreneurship education and regional development.