That’s the gist of the new book Engines of Innovation by UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein, UNC’s “entrepreneur in residence.”
In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Jay Schalin evaluates the book and is not much impressed. Where the authors see universities as the superhighway to the future, Jay sees a muddy path to mission creep.
I haven’t read the book yet, but I think I know what Thorp and Buckstein miss: if decision makers don’t stand to bear the cost of being wrong, they’ll frequently make bad decisions that waste resources. Because universities are overwhelmingly non-profit entities, the sort of idealistic, dreamy mindset that dominates in government policy is also dominant in academe. Sure, we’ll get some good ideas and innovations out of universities, but we should also expect a lot of bad ideas and failed innovations.
