Being entrepreneurial and innovation driven applies both to the organisation as a whole and to its constituting individuals. Organisational culture and values can tie the organisation and the individual together. For a broad acceptance of entrepreneurship and innovation from top management, senior levels of the institution to all other stakeholders both within and outside the higher education institution, the relevance of entrepreneurship and innovation will need to be demonstrated.

The involvement of key external stakeholders – from business, government and civil society – into the governing board of an HEI can help with this. The task of the governing board is to guide the establishment of strategic objectives and to oversee organisational change and development processes.

Having a clear and widely known strategy is also important. The strategy should state entrepreneurial aspirations and its innovation agenda supported by a roadmap and associated key performance indicators, for example:

• Generating entrepreneurial motivation, cognition, and attitudes for its staff and students
• Generating entrepreneurial competences and skills
• Supporting business start-ups; commercialising research results through technology transfer
• Generating revenues for the institution from spin-off activities
• Strengthening co-operation between the institution and local firms, its entrepreneurial ecosystem more broadly

The objectives and key performance indicators need to be monitored and reviewed on a regular basis as set out in a roadmap. A long-term overall objective might be to develop entrepreneurship and innovation as fundamental parts of organisational culture and values. The aim is that, in the long run, these practices become an integral part of daily professional life. To this end, an HEI could, for example:

• Include in its staff performance review system the opportunity for all staff to demonstrate how they have supported innovation and entrepreneurship
• Provide highly visible public recognition by senior management of lecturers, researchers and other staff members or students that have applied entrepreneurial thinking or behaviours, which resulted in wider organisational benefits
• Include entrepreneurial learning outcomes in the validation of all the teaching and learning programmes across all subject areas