A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Christos Apostolakis, José Carlos Rodríguez and Mario Gómez
Elements 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
Invention
Disclosure
10,178 11,303 11,784 12,324 13,032 * *
Total Patent
Applications
4,733 6,629 7,714 8,802 9,925 * *
Start-ups 248 261 285 280 252 * *
Source: The Association of University Technology Managers (years 1997 up until 2004).
*The value needed was not available due to distribution of values per university and not as a sum.
**Thousands of Canadian dollars.
We spend a lot of time in the first introductory entrepreneurship course on creativity and
innovation, just getting them thinking about possibilities. I like to see an emphasis on idea
generation and exploring their [students] creativity and their ability to think about how
things whether they are processes or approaches or whatever may be modified and
adaptive hence a focus on innovation.
(Senior academic at a university of eastern Canada)
This increasing culture is so evident that:
Students in one of the years in high school running a company, their own company with
the view to make money. Our students go to the classrooms in high schools to help them
with this company programme. We also have them come here at the University so that’s
all part of increasing their exposure to what’s going on in the Business School. And there
isn’t all about, you know, finance and accounting. There an entrepreneurship culture here
in which they can participate.
(The dean of the business school at a university of eastern Canada)
It could be argued that this University has preferred a more commercial approach, which derived from
its attitude towards entrepreneurship. This was clearly stated in the website of its centre on
entrepreneurship that “provides aspiring entrepreneurs with counselling advice and direction on a
business idea to the point of business start-up” (A University in Eastern Canada, 2008). However, in
the same website it is also stated that this centre is “open to all members of the university community
including undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and alumni”.
Additionally, that there was evidence of willingness to see entrepreneurship as affecting the local
community in a positive way in the long run, as one of the young entrepreneurs at their incubator
event suggested:
So I think that just economic factors have forced people to be innovative to be
entrepreneurial to create opportunities for themselves here. Projects like Launch Pad
allows the next generation, our generation to have another alternative in building a future
here instead of going to the mainland or another place. Anytime you can keep somebody
here, a young person that is going to build a business here and employ other people then
you build a boost for everyone.
(Young entrepreneur at a Canadian University)
This university has already reached a well defined state of entrepreneurial orientation culture. This is
reflected in the university’s curriculum. For example, the Faculty of Business created the position of
the Chair in Youth-Focused Technological Entrepreneurship, which encompasses responsibilities of
conducting relevant research, creating new ventures; and support entrepreneurship within the subject
areas of business, engineering, science and medicine. In addition, their entrepreneurship institute
introduced a series of initiatives such as: the Entrepreneur-in-Residence initiative; scholarships and
awards to recognise entrepreneurial endeavours, business plans, etc; In this respect, it would be fair
to claim that this Canadian university has had well established innovation, proactiveness and risk
taking approaches.
In summary then and answering the question about how far how entrepreneurial innovation exists in
Canadian universities this could be answered as it is presented in Table 4.
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