Recent national and regional innovation policies have both catalysed and compounded the entrepreneurial tendency in higher education, redefining the traditional roles of universities. While academic debate has for some time addressed the importance of universities to regional economic development, more recent literature has focused explicitly on how universities engage directly with (regional) economies. Such engagement is entirely contingent on the capacity of universities and, since not all universities are equal, this presents a considerable challenge for academic debate and policy makers alike. In other words, public policy and institutional design need to maximize the impact of the ‘Third Mission’ by understanding better the factors that underpin it, irrespective of context. This paper introduces entrepreneurial architecture (EA) as both a theoretical bridge and a practical approach that unites endogenous – and mutable – determinants of the entrepreneurial university. First, the paper presents a contextual overview of the academic literature and situates the contribution of EA in contemporary debates. This is followed by development of the conceptual foundations of EA; and the third section concludes with the academic and policy implications of the concept and outlines avenues for future research.
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