The Entrepreneurial University: The Building Block of the Innovation Economy

Abstract

This paper explores the role of entrepreneurial universities in economic growth and development. Specifically, it defines the indicators of an entrepreneurial university, traces the impact of university innovation on economic growth, and correlates the university ranking with indicators of innovation, competitiveness, and development. The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2011/12 provided the data for entrepreneurial universities. Correlates of rankings of entrepreneurial universities include the global innovation index, global competitive index and human development index. The top 400 world universities are large (enrolment over 12,000) and historic (over 100 years). They cluster in Europe and North America, offer fully comprehensive programs, and have high research intensity. U.S. data show that university innovations contribute substantially to jobs, value creation and industry output. The Pearson coefficients indicate that QS university ranking is significantly and positively correlated with research infrastructure (gross expenditure in R&D, number of researchers, total patents) and economic development (gross national income, global competitiveness index, global innovation index and human development index). Thus, research infrastructures are necessary for entrepreneurial universities to flourish. Once established, entrepreneurial universities, through job and value creation, transforms the country into an innovation economy, boost its global competitiveness, and improve its quality of life.Keywords: Business and economics, entrepreneurial university, correlation analysis, globalranking