ABSTRACT
The traditional role of academic research in society is to contribute to the accumulation of scientific knowledge in every field. One of the engines of a creative economy being knowledge sharing, academic researchers and universities have an important role to play in fostering creativity. At the end of the 1990s the entrepreneurial model of university emerged (Clark, 1998; Etzkowitz, 1998) and became the implicit model underlying science and technology policies discourses. Beside their traditional missions of education and research, universities have to develop the commercialisation of the results of research activities, to set up partnerships with economic and political actors, to define patenting policies and to encourage the entrepreneurial behaviour of researchers (Etzkowitz, 2003; Rasmussen et al., 2006). The generalisation of the entrepreneurial model generates debates questioning the pertinence of a unique paradigm guiding the evolution of a diversified academic system, the role of universities in society and the impact of the commercialisation of the results of research on scientific communities (Conceiçao and Heitor, 1999; Florida and Cohen, 1999; Geuna et al., 2004; Mailhot and Schaeffer, 2005, Cohendet et al., 2006). The diversification of the missions of universities raises new challenges for universities. They have to favour the development of entrepreneurial and commercial activities without being detrimental to teaching and research activities (Etzkowitz, 1996, 2003).
