Academic Entrepreneurship: Views on Balancing the Acropolis and the Agora

Abstract

Given the disquieting changes in higher education worldwide, universities need new directions and ways of thinking about how to operate. In this article, we propose the notion of academic entrepreneurship, in which each employee pursues or supports those who pursue opportunities to build and improve their units, colleges, or universities. We present ways that individual faculty members, program managers, department chairs, deans, and provosts can support academic entrepreneurship through helping to create opportunities, nurturing people who recognize and act on them, garnering resources to support opportunities, and creating a culture that supports the entrepreneurial activities of universities.