Startup Culture Flourishes on America’s College Campuses

The Department of Commerce released a new report entitled The Innovative and Entrepreneurial University, underscoring the increasingly diverse ways in which colleges and universities across America are promoting cultures of entrepreneurship on campus and encouraging students to start companies.

In April of 2011, nearly 150 APLU and AAU presidents signed on to a letter to then-Secretary Locke of the U.S. Department of Commerce, pledging their universities to “greater efforts to advance regional and national economic growth” (read the full letter here). APLU’s Commission on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Economic Prosperity (CICEP) led APLU’s effort to garner signatures.

Commerce’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship followed up the letter with in-depth research into the kinds of efforts being undertaken by participating universities, across six key areas of innovation ecosystem development: promoting student innovation and entrepreneurship, encouraging faculty innovation and entrepreneurship, actively supporting the university technology transfer function, facilitating university-industry collaboration, and engaging with regional and local economic development efforts. This report is a result of that research, and examples of university initiatives in all of these areas are included.

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