The top universities in the United
States and United Kingdom still dominate the world in terms of
entrepreneurial quality and capacity for innovation. However, the
competition is starting to assert itself.
The US and the UK remain at the top of the
list of countries with the greatest number of universities contributing
to the creation of the most successful entrepreneurial ecosystems
worldwide. This is the assessment made by the
Technology Innovation Ecosystem Benchmarking Study
conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in
collaboration with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
(Skoltech), a private graduate research university based in Skolkovo, a
suburb of Moscow, Russia, which was founded in 2011 in collaboration
with MIT.
This report
is the first part of a three-phase study focusing on the question of
which institutes of higher learning have the best “university-based
technology innovation ecosystems”. While US and UK universities remain
at the top of the list, new arrivals in the rankings, notably Israeli
university
Technion, seem to portend changes in this competitive environment.
Supportive environments and challenging environments
Drawing on interviews with 61 experts from 20 countries, the report
identifies 120 universities which have demonstrated a decisive impact
and made a significant contribution in the field of entrepreneurship and
innovation (E&I) at international level. US universities MIT and
the University of Stanford head the rankings, with two British
universities – the University of Cambridge and Imperial College, London –
hard on their heels. However, two tertiary education establishments
located outside the United States and Europe now appear in the top ten:
Israel’s
Technion, which comes sixth on the list; and the
National University of Singapore (NUS) in tenth place. Moreover, Israel
is the most frequently cited country in response to the question: “Which
universities would you identify as having created/supported highly
effective technology innovation ecosystems despite a challenging
environment?” The challenging environments in which the universities are
operating are typically characterised as cultures that do not support
entrepreneurship and innovation, are isolated geographically, or suffer
from a lack of venture capital. France appears in sixth place on this
‘challenged’ list.
Key ingredients for an ‘E&I’ star
The report also seeks to highlight the key factors that underpin the
success of a university-based technology innovation ecosystem. One of
the “essential” ingredients is considered to be an “institutional
E&I culture”. Among the other decisive factors are: university
research capability; a powerful student-led entrepreneurship drive; and
local or regional quality of life. Following this first report in a
wider three-phase study carried out by MIT, the second phase will set
out to provide a detailed assessment of a selected sub-set of the
universities identified in phase 1. The report states that in this Phase
2, “the focus will be on institutions that (…) appear to have played a
pivotal role in the success of their ecosystem”.
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