Development of a Concept for Entrepreneurial Universities in Russia

Due to the recognition of the role of entrepreneurial universities as centers of innovations in the context of knowledge economy worldwide, the present work studied the evolution of higher education system and, in particular, the concept of "entrepreneurial university". The following definition was used in this work: an entrepreneurial university is not only a university which succeeds in commercialization of the research results, but also provides sustainable regional and national development of entrepreneurial culture. There were identified the criteria to consider a university entrepreneurial, and it is possible to estimate the entrepreneurial capacity of university comprehensively. There was also studied the experience of a number of foreign successful entrepreneurial universities, namely Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Stanford University (USA), Aalto University (Finland), Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Oxford university (UK), Singapore University of Management, Institute of Business Development of India, Ajou University (South Korea). The main distinction between these universities consists in duration of their existence and consequently, the acquired experience and the created ecosystem. Therefore, for formation of entrepreneurial universities the bidirectional model has been defined: either "bottom-up", or "top-down". Besides, for transition to the entrepreneurial model universities have to overcome the following restrictions: personnel, infrastructure, financial, standard, competence-based, and structural. In compliance with these restrictions tasks and actions for their elimination were identified, as well as the elements integral for the structure of an entrepreneurial university, and the vision of an entrepreneurial university. The analysis of entrepreneurial capacity of Higher School of Economics National Research University – Nizhny Novgorod became the result of the work.