The Idea of the University as Incubator

Abstract

We have been advised for some time now that, in order to withstand the economic, demographic, and other challenges they face, universities must continually innovate. Presidents and vice-chancellors must foster “disruptive innovation” if they are to ensure that their institutions survive and thrive. But how to create an innovative university, especially when institutional change of any kind proves to be a complex process with limited success stories. In order to bring about the kind of disruptive innovation that the current environment seemingly demands requires rethinking the idea of a university incubator. Universities might develop incubators not to generate new technologies or new businesses but new, innovative forms of the very idea of the university itself. In this model, the idea of the university becomes that entity that engages in the creation and nurturing of organizational novelty, novelty here referring to new forms of epistemological organization. The design and implementation of new organizational forms becomes the raison d'etre of the university.