Selected Problems of an Entrepreneurial University - a Theoretical Perspective

Abstract

Abstract The aim of the paper is to identify university’s activities and characteristics that enable it to reorient itself towards the idea of an entrepreneurial university. In the modern world, universities have an additional important role, that is, the need to adopt entrepreneurial strategies without disrupting the quality of teaching and research. First of all, the authors discuss the idea of entrepreneurship and focus mainly on academic entrepreneurship. The idea of entrepreneurship is becoming more and more desirable in a modern organization thus also in a university. The new role of the university is to create the entrepreneurial ideas and attitudes among students and all university employees, as well as to initiate entrepreneurial activities in academic institutions. It is also necessary to plan entrepreneurial university architecture. The article focuses on presenting the theoretical foundations of the academic entrepreneurship process to finally make a synthetic comparison of the features of a traditional university and an entrepreneurial university. The main research question of the article is: In which dimensions the idea of an entrepreneurial university can lead to the development of the university? The result of the research is a new combination of attributes and characteristics of an enterprising university and new directions of university’s development. By this paper the authors take part in the discussion about the implementation of the idea of entrepreneurship in contemporary university management.