University entrepreneurship through third stream activities

Abstract

Third stream activities are a complex and evolving phenomenon that, in recent decades, has been articulated in politics as a result of the interactions between university, industry, Government and organised Popular Power. There has been a growing pressure on universities, to move from teaching and conducting research, to this third mission as a contribution to society, and to Popular Power. This research addresses this phenomenon through an extensive literature review, especially focus on the strategic orientation of third stream using a Socratic discourse on the interdependencies between these three missions of the university, its local integration,  the heterogeneity of extension activities, and, finally, the role of the Social Sciences and Humanities in the potential development of the aforementioned extension activities. This discussion in the literature recognises that, together with the world economic crisis, the growing pressure on natural resources and the environment, official declarations increasingly recognise the necessary role of the university in sustainable development, demanding active policies from one of the main actors of innovation, the Government, in the emerging role of co-creation for the sustainability of universities as a whole.