Entrepreneurial Universities

New cohort starting February 2024
Duration: 20 weeks
Registration deadline: 1st February
Price: 15,000 EUR (member discounts apply)

Universities around the world are seeking to embrace an entrepreneurial mindset, enabling them to drive innovation, cultivate talent and remain competitive in the evolving landscape of higher education.

The Entrepreneurial Universities program uses an evidence-based, practical methodology to evaluate and enhance your entrepreneurial activities and structures, and foster an entrepreneurial mindset and approach throughout your institution to strengthen your impact.

More about this program

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Launch your journey towards a more entrepreneurial and innovative institution

Who should participate?

Universities seeking to become more entrepreneurial, engaged and innovative, increase their impact and embed entrepreneurial mindset and activities throughout the organisation.

Recommendations for the core team include a mixture of entrepreneurship and innovation staff; decision-makers responsible for driving innovation and entrepreneurship, and academic staff involved in entrepreneurial activities.

What is involved?

Focus groups to explore your goals and motivations for becoming more entrepreneurial, and desired activities and mechanisms to implement.
Tailored survey to map entrepreneurial activities, mindset, organisation and ecosystem across students, academics, leadership and professional staff.
Roadmap workshops to delve deeper into the key areas for transformation and develop an implementation plan for embedding entrepreneurial and innovative pathways.
Knowledge exchange events to expose you to different frameworks and approaches to partnerships from universities and industry.

Why join the program?

Gain insights and knowledge on what it means to be an entrepreneurial university, and how that applies to your own institution.
Engage different stakeholders to create a vision and coordinated approach for developing entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial mindsets at the university.
Learn from other universities about how they organise their approach to entrepreneurship to identify elements that might be applicable to your university.
Translate your ideas into action as expert facilitators guide you in the development of a roadmap to become a more entrepreneurial university.

Program activities and timeline

Kick-off

Introduction to the topic

Week 1 | Introduction to the program and participants and an interactive session on the concept and framework of the entrepreneurial university.

Focus group

Desired future state

Week 2-3 | Bring together the core team and senior management responsible for entrepreneurship, innovation and engagement.

Survey

Current state analysis

Week 4-8 | Participants receive a tailored survey to disseminate across university leadership, students, academic and professional staff to determine the status quo of the entrepreneurial university.

Workshop

Touch point

Week 9-10 | Half-way event to re-connect, hear from external guest speakers and undertake an internal and external asset mapping workshop.

Analysis

Survey analysis and reporting

Week 10-12 | Survey responses and information gathered from the focus groups will be aggregated and analysed by UIIN.

Workshop

Develop your roadmap

Week 13-14 | Interactive workshop to shape the entrepreneurial university roadmap and new initiatives and structures to implement.

Report

Final report and recommendations

Week 15-18 | UIIN will collate the findings and insights collected through the survey and workshops into a report with recommendations.

Wrap-up

Closing session

Week 19-20 | Participant presentations to share program learnings and insights, and discuss how to continue to implement the recommendations beyond the program.

Program team

Arno Meerman

A/Prof. Dr. Todd Davey

Dr. Balzhan Orazbayeva

Dr. Sarah Jaber

Empowering institutions to lead transformative change

“We joined the program as a way to start an inclusive conversation on creating an entrepreneurial mindset, and elevating and celebrating innovation and entrepreneurship. It was a great opportunity to bring internal stakeholders together, and gather data on our current state to benchmark our achievements and gaps to help map our path going forward. We especially appreciated the guidance and insights from the UIIN team and our mentor, who challenged and inspired our thinking.”

Carol Stewart

Associate Vice-President Tech Parks Arizona, University of Arizona

“The University of South-Eastern Norway was a proud participant in the first round of UIIN’s Entrepreneurial Universities Program. Participation in this program undoubtedly provided us with insight, new knowledge and good support in our university’s work towards becoming an entrepreneurial university.”

Nils Kristian Bogen

Vice-Rector for External Interaction, The University of South-Eastern Norway

"The [Entrepreneurial Universities] program enabled us to have a platform to collaboratively bring together a cohort from across the university, providing a diversity of perspectives. [...] The skilled program facilitators enabled us to translate thoughts, ideas and desires from across the university into an action plan."

Brooke Orr

Associate Director Innovation, James Cook University