Guy Levesque is Executive Director of the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking at the University of Calgary.

Universities celebrate excellence; failure, not so much. Entrepreneurship centres celebrate failure and build excellence. Only one of those statements makes headlines. 

A few weeks ago, I joined a global conversation hosted by the University Industry Innovation Network with one deceptively simple question: why do  entrepreneurship centres struggle to fit inside universities, despite universities saying innovation and entrepreneurship are priorities? 

The answer is not for lack of interest. It’s structural. Universities are designed to reward expertise, certainty and academic achievement. Entrepreneurship requires experimentation, ambiguity and resilience through failure. Lots of it. Those worlds can complement each other powerfully, but only if institutions intentionally create space for both.

I happen to lead the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking at the University of Calgary, often referred to as “Canada’s Entrepreneurial University.” Having spent many years at the intersection of research, innovation, partnerships and entrepreneurship, I have lived these tensions firsthand across institutions and ecosystems.

Here are four major contradictions universities must confront if they are serious about developing entrepreneurial talent.

1.  We celebrate “nine pivots.” The university celebrates “4.0s:” This is the biggest yet most subtle contradiction facing entrepreneurship at universities.

Students spend years in systems where success is defined by precision and performance. Failure is something to avoid, minimize or recover from quickly. Then they walk into entrepreneurship spaces where they are invited to experiment, test assumptions, hear “no” repeatedly – defined by practice and pivot.

Entrepreneurship centres celebrate the nine pivots, the 99 investor rejections and the first unsuccessful product launch because that is where real learning begins.

This is no different than the scientist whose experiment fails repeatedly before discovery. No different than the athlete who misses the movement dozens of times before mastering it.

Yet culturally, universities are still far more comfortable celebrating the polished success story than protecting the messy middle required to create excellence. 

If institutions genuinely want more founders, innovators and changemakers, they need to normalize experimentation before outcomes are guaranteed. That means creating environments where students are encouraged to try, fail, recover and try again without feeling they have jeopardized their academic standing or future prospects.

2.  Everyone owns it. That’s the problem: universally, entrepreneurial thinking and activities are spread across the institution, including:

• being embedded in academic courses, modules and projects.
• featured in co- or extra-curricular student club activities and competitions.
• as part of experiential learning opportunities; in entrepreneurship hubs and centres – typically embedded within a Faculty or School and often supported by a philanthropic gift or major donation.
• residing in technology transfer offices and incubators.

On the surface it looks like progress. In practice, fragmented ownership, competing priorities and institutional turf protection all arise. Where academics and practitioners work to complement each other rather than compete is when entrepreneurial activities thrive.

The term “entrepreneurship” evokes stereotypes. Even when framed as “entrepreneurial thinking” or “entrepreneurial mindset,” they are difficult to avoid. The result is often duplication and internal competition for visibility, funding and legitimacy.

All these create subtle and not so subtle barriers to access. 

Institutional support and visibility are critical for entrepreneurship to thrive at a university. Universities need to ask:   

• Is entrepreneurship part of institutional strategic priorities? Is it a component of the institutional identity?
• How does the university’s senior leadership talk about entrepreneurship? Does it show up anywhere on the organizational chart? 
• Does the broader local community recognize and support the university’s entrepreneurship efforts? 
• How are entrepreneurship activities funded and are they sustainable? 

3.  Who’s in the room determines what gets built: is entrepreneurship a feature or a footnote?

When included within institutional governance structures, entrepreneurship becomes visible and valued. Whether embedded within a Faculty or School or a central office, its fit within the institution’s hierarchy is critical. Participation in institutional governance bodies creates credibility. The questions that matter are surprisingly practical:

• Who are the recognized leaders and champions across campus? 
• Do they have an opportunity to connect and exchange as part of an entrepreneurial community/community of practice?
• How informed and engaged is the university’s governing board? Does the board include members with entrepreneurial experience?
• Who does the head of the entrepreneurship centre report to?              

Good governance models do not isolate entrepreneurship deep inside one faculty or treat it as a side project. They create institutional bridges between academic leadership, practitioners, students, community and industry.

The universities making the greatest progress are the ones treating entrepreneurship as an institution-wide capability rather than a niche activity.

The role of university entrepreneurship centres

4.  Are university entrepreneurship centres legitimate: do they get labeled as doing the “soft” work while the “real” work happens elsewhere like technology transfer offices and incubators? 

The entrepreneurial journey and the startup journey are long. Entrepreneurship centres are usually engaging at the very earliest part of those journeys – the top of the funnel – where fundamentals, foundational programs and first steps are critical for pre-ideation and ideation stages. 

Here I am always reminded of the words of entrepreneurship thought leader Chris Heivly (author of the book Build the Fort), “No Funnel, No Future:”

“That funnel starts way earlier than most people want to admit. It starts with the messy idea stage. It starts with the first-time founder who is not “investor ready,” not media trained, not fully confident, and maybe not even sure whether the problem they are solving is real. It starts with the awkward, unclear, frustrating stretch between idea and product-market fit.

Without any doubt, that is the hardest part of the whole journey.

This is where founders burn time, money, and emotional energy. This is where they need the most support and usually get the least, because they are still rough around the edges. They are harder to identify, harder to promote, and harder to package into a nice community success story.”

That is the space entrepreneurship centres occupy.

At the Hunter Hub, we see this every day. Students and founders rarely arrive with fully formed ventures. They arrive with curiosity, uncertainty or a problem they cannot stop thinking about. The work is helping them develop the mindset, confidence and capability to move from possibility to action. This, on top of their academic pursuits focused on precision and performance.

The credibility and legitimacy come from the outcomes of the support being offered by the entrepreneurship centre, as well as its staff expertise and experience. If first-time founders are given a safe space to try experiment, fail, learn, pivot and make progress, then the entrepreneurship centre has done its job.  

The credibility of entrepreneurship centres should not be measured solely by how many venture-backed startups emerge immediately from campus. It should be measured by whether people leave university capable of navigating uncertainty, creating value and acting entrepreneurially wherever they go. 

These skills that are essential across every discipline and sector. 

Here’s what it looks like when it’s done right 

One of the reasons I chose to join the University of Calgary is because many of the institutional conditions required for entrepreneurial thinking to thrive are intentionally aligned here.

That alignment matters. Entrepreneurship cannot sit at the margins of an institution while simultaneously being expected to shape its future.

At UCalgary, entrepreneurial thinking is embedded in the university’s identity, reflected in its strategic priorities and supported at senior leadership levels. The Hunter Hub operates as a university-wide initiative rather than inside a single faculty, bringing together practitioners, academic leaders, entrepreneurs and community voices across disciplines.

Despite all these competitive advantages, tensions will always exist. When entrepreneurship is treated as a shared institutional capability rather than a competitive interest, conversations are productive, outcomes meaningful. Working to complement rather than compete, we all win, to help build the most entrepreneurial generation in Canada’s history.

The institutions willing to roll up their sleeves at the top of the funnel and dive into the messy middle are the ones that will build the next generation of founders, innovators and changemakers. 

Is yours one of them?  

R$