From classroom to incubator: Entrepreneurship education, triple helix collaboration and university-centred entrepreneurial ecosystems in Vietnam

Universities in emerging economies are increasingly asked not only to teach entrepreneurship but to build the ecosystems in which it can be practised. Drawing on 189 semi-structured interviews and four case studies of Vietnamese university business incubators (UBIs), this study examines how entrepreneurship education curricula are translated, through university-centred entrepreneurial ecosystems, into venture creation. Using an extended Triple Helix lens, I trace the operational mechanisms — curriculum design, mentorship pipelines, technology transfer and funding relationships — that connect classroom learning to incubation outcomes, and identify where government and international development actors already function as informal fourth-helix partners. Findings show that ecosystems anchored in explicit entrepreneurship curricula outperform those relying on incubation infrastructure alone, although funding gaps, mentorship shortages and regulatory ambiguity persist. I offer policymakers and university administrators a practical agenda for embedding entrepreneurship education within collaborative, multi-actor ecosystems.