Commentary: If Your Entrepreneurship Center Still Reports To The Business School, Your University Is Already Behind

Across higher education, the landscape of innovation has shifted dramatically. Universities want to commercialize research, win federal grants, build industry partnerships, launch startups, and make measurable contributions to their regional economies.

Yet many institutions still house their entrepreneurship center inside the business school, reporting to a dean whose mandate covers only a fraction of the university’s innovation activity.

Twenty years ago, this structure was normal. Today, it is a strategic liability.

Innovation no longer lives within a single discipline — and certainly not within a single college. The most transformative ideas now emerge from engineering labs, health sciences, computing, cybersecurity, data science, applied research centers, and interdisciplinary teams that have nothing to do with a traditional business curriculum.

When entrepreneurship remains structurally trapped in a business school silo, the rest of the university is effectively shut out — and the institution loses ground.

THE NATIONAL MODEL HAS ALREADY MOVED ON

The most innovative universities — R1s, rapidly ascending R2s, and forward-thinking regional publics — have already reorganized. Entrepreneurship now reports to the:

• Provost
• Vice President for Research
• Economic Development division
• Central innovation & commercialization hubs
• President’s Office

Why? Because modern university innovation is no longer about teaching students how to write a business plan. It is about:

• Research commercialization and tech transfer
• Launching faculty and clinician-led spinouts
• Securing NSF Engines, DoD, EDA, and NIH funding
• Partnering with major corporate and government stakeholders
• Applied research infrastructure
• Regional talent development
• Building thriving innovation districts and ecosystems
• Supporting every college, not just one

Business schools remain important partners — but they are no longer the structural home of an institution’s innovation strategy.

THE ‘WE’RE OPEN TO EVERYONE’ MYTH

Nearly every business school with an entrepreneurship center will say, “We’re open to all students.” And they mean it.

But here’s the truth:

Access is not the same as alignment.

A center can be physically open to all students — but if it reports through a business school dean, it will inevitably prioritize:

• business school culture
• business school courses
• business school faculty incentives
• business school advancement priorities
• business school donors
• business school metrics
• business school budgets

These priorities are legitimate — but they do not reflect the innovation needs of engineering, health sciences, computing, design, or the arts.

Structure shapes behavior. And structure determines impact.

When entrepreneurship is placed inside a business school, the message sent to campus is unmistakable:

“This isn’t really for you.”

As a result, even the best-intentioned centers struggle to attract STEM faculty, clinicians, and interdisciplinary innovators.

Innovation today is research-driven, tech-forward, interdisciplinary, and region-facing. Business schools can participate in it — but they are not built to lead it.

THE COST OF STAYING IN THE OLD MODEL

Universities that keep entrepreneurship under the business school dean quietly pay a steep price:

• STEM and health faculty disengage, because the structure excludes them.
• Research commercialization slows, often dramatically.
• Corporate partners look elsewhere for institutions that speak the language of applied research.
• Federal funding becomes harder to win, because innovation is siloed and lacks institutional authority.
• Regional economic development bypasses the campus, seeing no centralized front door.
• Entrepreneurship becomes a niche program, not a university-wide strategy.
• Most students never access innovation resources, despite paying for them.

Meanwhile, universities that have restructured — UMass Amherst, NSU’s Levan Center, Stony Brook, Binghamton, Kansas, Arizona State, and others — are pulling ahead with measurable gains in research translation, startup creation, workforce development, and economic impact.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO CROSS-DISCIPLINARY ECOSYSTEMS

Entrepreneurship today isn’t a program — it’s an ecosystem.

And ecosystems don’t belong to a single college. They belong to the university.

Thriving innovation institutions recognize that entrepreneurship sits at the intersection of:

• Research
• Talent
• Community
• Industry
• Economic development
• Government
• Interdisciplinary discovery

No single dean’s office can support that complexity. It requires presidential or provost-level alignment and a structure that reaches the entire institution.

A BLUEPRINT FOR UNIVERSITIES TO MODERNIZE

For institutions ready to move beyond the legacy model, the path forward is clear:

1. Move entrepreneurship to a central portfolio. Align it with the Provost, VP for Research, or Economic Development — wherever interdisciplinary collaboration already occurs.
2. Build a unified innovation hub. Create a single front door for innovation, entrepreneurship, partnerships, tech transfer, and corporate engagement.
3. Integrate deeply with research. Entrepreneurship must connect to labs, centers, faculty development, and translational research teams.
4. Treat innovation as economic development. Modern universities create jobs, support industry, and drive regional competitiveness. Entrepreneurship should sit where those decisions are made.
5. Expand participation beyond business students. Engineering, health, computing, arts, and interdisciplinary fields drive the majority of innovation. The structure must serve them.
6. Partner intentionally with community and industry. Innovation is regional by nature. The university must be positioned to lead, not follow.
7. Use Talent–Innovation–Place as the framework. These three pillars — the same used in national innovation designations — create a measurable, institution-wide strategy.

CONCLUSION: THE STAKES HAVE NEVER BEEN HIGHER

Today’s most competitive universities understand that innovation is not an extracurricular activity — it is central to their mission and to their responsibility to the region.

Universities that continue to tuck entrepreneurship under a business school dean are signaling, intentionally or not, that innovation is optional or peripheral.

In 2026 and beyond, that model is untenable.

The future belongs to institutions that see entrepreneurship as cross-disciplinary, research-driven, region-shaping, and central to the university’s identity.

If your entrepreneurship center still reports to the business school, your university is already behind.

Now is the time to catch up.

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Patrick McQuown is a two-time exited entrepreneur and nationally recognized innovation leader. He founded The StarTUp at Towson University—named Maryland’s top incubator and accelerator by the Baltimore Business Journal, featured by Poets & Quants as “unlike anything anywhere in the world,” and central to Towson earning the UEDA Most Engaged University in the Nation designation. He previously led university entrepreneurship efforts at James Madison University and Towson University, and has also served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and faculty member at Yale University and Brown University. He is the founder of ECLECTIC Founders, an accelerator-as-a-service platform supporting universities, health systems, and economic development agencies.

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