An Entrepreneurial University Ecosystem for Sustaining the Twin Transition Through a Complex Adaptive System Approach

The impact of digital and green transitions (the “
twin transition”
) brings societal challenges that universities must address proactively by assuming an ecosystem organizational model. Beginning from this premise, in this article, we aim to investigate how an entrepreneurial university ecosystem having adopted a dynamic evolution model can sustain its stakeholders in facing the twin transition. The study proposes to adopt system dynamics as a methodology for modeling the complexity characterizing an entrepreneurial university ecosystem in terms of nodes and knowledge flow in their accomplishment of the twin transition. Accordingly, this article presents evidence from a case study of an entrepreneurial university ecosystem in South Italy, the LUM University “Giuseppe Degennaro” in Bari. The LUM university evolved in response to the stakeholders’ challenges in facing both digital transformation and green transition. Findings show that universities must change quickly to incorporate entrepreneurship activities and complex interrelationships among the various stakeholders according to the complex adaptive system model. Implications for theory and practice regard the novel role of the entrepreneurial university ecosystems actively engaged in sustaining stakeholders’ achievement of the twin transition's strategic goals.