Purpose
Entrepreneurial universities, through their intellectual capital (IC), can promote the development of a third mission, which involves collaborating with business and societal organizations to create value. Joint research projects are undertaken within entrepreneurial universities leveraging their IC. These generate value for both the academic community and the territory as they generate impact, in terms of regional IC. 

At the micro level, scientists in the principal investigator (PI) role are influential actors in generating impact and IC that is beneficial for all joint project stakeholders. The purpose of the paper is to address the existing gap in entrepreneurial university literature concerning the impact generation process.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper represents a theoretical contribution adopting a deductive approach.

Findings
This paper proposes a novel approach to support PIs in entrepreneurial universities in the process of managing innovative initiatives toward IC impact generation. First, we present the IC-based Research Impact Tool (ICRIT) to guide PIs acting as explorative entrepreneurs; then we propose an IC-based Research Impact Report (ICRIR) including some key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate impact and IC.

Research limitations/implications
The theoretical approach proposed could be developed further. This could be furthered through more empirical studies using initially, for example, comparative cross-country case study research.

Originality/value
The paper sheds new light on the importance of the final impact generated by research initiatives, focusing on the crucial role played by PIs and promoting the adoption of an IC-based strategic approach, to maximize the final impact of projects, in terms of regional IC.