Building Entrepreneurial Universities in Russia as an Instrument of Global Competitiveness

In the current Russian higher education market there is an obvious stagnation in the development of the entrepreneurial ecosystems of universities while more and more companies and organizations seek for university graduates which have entrepreneurial type of minds. As it has been written at the beginning of the previous century by J. Schumpeter, “an entrepreneurial approach from managers and entrepreneurs could drive organization’s profits and economy”. This paper describes the ways university might transform itself into entrepreneurial one with the aim of building greater profits and providing innovative researches. During the analysis of the universities rankings of famous agencies (Times Higher Education and RVS's innovation activity ranking) the researcher provides valid arguments for the correlation of the place of the Russian university in the overall World ranking and the place of the same university in the ranking of entrepreneurial and innovative activity of universities. This relation between the level of the development of entrepreneurial culture in the university and its overall success on the World stage is the main scientific contribution of this study. Appropriate steps for universities which want to develop its entrepreneurial ecosystem are listed and the example of Higher School of Economic (Saint-Petersburg campus) is provided in order to show the way university could transform itself in order to became entrepreneurial and increase university's global competitiveness. Key terms: entrepreneurship university, entrepreneurial education, university ranking, competitiveness.