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The Covid-19 pandemic has given new meaning to the local and global role of universities. Use this reach to be a catalyst for entrepreneurship, argues Erik Stam, professor of Strategy, Organization and Entrepreneurship and dean of the Utrecht University School of Economics.

We are currently in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis. A crisis that paradoxically has strengthened both the local and global role of universities. On the one hand, the universities have gained a more global reach. The crisis has accelerated the digital transition. Education and research have never been as intensively digital as they are right now, which has made the global reach of universities possible. We teach students locally and globally at the same time in the same digital classroom, and it has never been easier to meet research staff worldwide.

What role can we expect the university to play in such an increasingly digital and fragile knowledge economy?

On the other hand, universities are becoming an anchor in the local economy: a stable employer in the business turbulence of the crisis, and students prefer a short commute to and from their university to travelling to other regions for academic education. We do not yet know what the long-term effects of this crisis will be, but it will certainly lead to new articulations of the local and the global. What role can we expect the university to play in such an increasingly digital and fragile knowledge economy?

We already knew that we live in a society that faces global challenges. Tackling global challenges – locally - has become even more prominent in the Covid-19 crisis. Challenges for which solutions must be discovered and created. This requires attitudes, skills and behaviours that stimulate the pursuit and realisation of new value creation.

The university's traditional role as a developer of in-depth disciplinary, scientific expertise needs to be enriched with attitudes and skills aimed at creating new value and improving tomorrow's society. Talent and knowledge creation must become increasingly multidisciplinary in order to create new combinations of knowledge and skills needed to meet global challenges. Creating these new combinations and making them work requires students and researchers equipped with the right entrepreneurial skills and attitudes.

The future is not something that exists out there, but something that we create.

Universities should encourage bottom-up initiatives, combined with a university vision. Universities need to become aware of their role in entrepreneurial ecosystems; namely to train students who can create value in organisations, the economy and society. And universities are a source of knowledge that stimulates curiosity and is relevant to society.

The future is not something that exists out there, but something that we create. Entrepreneurship is key to creating the future, and universities must be a catalyst to enable entrepreneurship by being a source of talent and knowledge locally, but also to connect with other enterprising ecosystems globally.

This contribution was originally made for the publication