Avaliação do impacto da universidade na sociedade através de suas empresas filhas: proposta de modelo conceitual e aplicação piloto em uma universidade brasileira

Abstract

Society has changed over the years and the way universities impact society has also changed: entrepreneurship and innovation are more present guidelines on how universities can impact society. One of these ways is through the generation of entrepreneurial ventures of university graduates (daughter companies) – companies created by people with some connection with the University. MIT, Stanford, UNESP, UNICAMP are examples of universities that mapped and measured the impact of their daughter companies on society, through forms, internet searches, and use of existing databases. The objective of this research was to seek a better understanding on how a university can map its daughter companies, and measure the economic impact of these companies on society. After a literature review, an evaluation of public sources of information on Brazilian companies was carried out, proposing a conceptual model listing alternatives that can be used by universities for mapping and measuring the economic impact of their daughter companies. The conceptual model includes an unprecedented alternative in the literature, which is the automatic search, in public databases, of daughter companies linked to the name or document of students and alumni of the University, resulting in a 100% identification rate of companies. This automatic search, and other aspects of the proposed model, were then tested in a pilot application at the Federal University of São Carlos – UFSCar. To test the automatic search mechanism, a pilot study was carried out with the names of former students of the Computer Engineering course at UFSCar (1992 to 2019), in which 792 former students created 699 companies, of which 453 (66.8% ) Micro Size companies, 47 (7.1%) Small Size companies and 178 (26.1%) Other Size companies. Three hundred sixty-eight (368) of these companies were active at the time of the survey. In addition to the automatic search mechanism, a form was applied that, through spontaneous participation, identified 66 UFSCar daughter companies, of which 34 (51%) answered about their annual revenue and 45 (68.18%) answered about the jobs generated. The annual turnover (of the 34 respondents) was R$35.09 million, and the jobs generated (by the 45 respondents) were 970. The research contributed by organizing information from the literature on the subject, by proposing a conceptual model with an unprecedented mechanism in the literature (automatic search), and by testing this unprecedented mechanism, identifying difficulties, generating discussions, and suggestions for its application on an institutional scale. One of the limitations of the pilot application was the non-exclusion of companies created by namesakes of former students. To go beyond this limitation, it is suggested new research, on an institutional scale, preferably using the document number, and not the name of the former students, which will already exclude companies created by homonyms. It is also suggested that this research be carried out as an institutional action, and after the opinion of the University's legal attorney, resolving doubts and providing legal certainty to the actions. These results can contribute to the generation of objective and broadly applicable indicators on the economic and social impact generated by universities through their daughter companies.