The Entrepreneurial University

As part of its strategic planning process, the University of Colorado at Boulder has begun exploring how to increase the propensity of faculty and students to engage in entrepreneurial activities. Nationwide, there are a few universities with a commitment to supporting entrepreneurship that can serve as examples. Notably, MIT and Stanford are two schools renowned for using the knowledge creation and invention that takes place on their campuses to create high quality companies. In contrast, many schools do not achieve such results, even with similar characteristics. This disparity raises the two questions addressed by the roundtable: (1) what separates a university that engages in this process effectively–i.e., the “Entrepreneurial University”–from the university that does not?; and (2) how can the University of Colorado- Boulder become an Entrepreneurial University?