“It will not be long before institutions are chosen by students because of the innovative and entrepreneurial environments and cultures that they create,” Dr Norah Clarke, Director at Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE), told universities’ executive leadership at the opening of their two-day workshop that started in Cape Town yesterday.
Locating the workshop in the national context of entrepreneurship development, Dr Clarke (above) was quoting words spoken by Professor Ahmed Bawa, CEO of Universities South Africa (USAf), at a previous EDHE event. She explained that these words provided a context for what EDHE was trying to achieve in supporting universities to become entrepreneurial, before continuing the Bawa quote: “This will mean understanding the relationship between the core teaching, learning and research activities of universities and the creation of these ecosystems. Only then will these become truly transformative interventions rather than a tack-on to the edge of institutions….”