Research universities can learn a lesson from business.

• Position: Triangle - Interview

Universities, especially those focusing on research, can and should be agents of societal change, says Information America co-founder Burton B. "Buck" Goldstein, entrepreneur-in-residence in the Department of Economics at UNC Chapel Hill. With their intellectual and financial resources, universities must help confront and solve such challenges as climate change, poverty, childhood diseases and an impending worldwide shortage of clean water. He is co-author with UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp of Engines of Innovation: The Entrepreneurial University in the 21 st Century, which will be published next month by the University of North Carolina Press.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

How can this be applied to higher education?

Entrepreneurial thinking is nothing new to higher learning. Many of the greatest universities were founded as a partnership between educators and entrepreneurial thinkers. Stanford University is a great example, as are Cornell, Johns Hopkins and, frankly, UNC, where a series of entrepreneurs including [chemist John Motley] Morehead [III] played an important role in creating a vision, employing resources effectively and executing the notion of encouraging excellence. We think a real opportunity is at the intersection of innovation and execution, and entrepreneurial thinking plays a critical role at that intersection.

You're not talking about entrepreneurship in the business sense.

Entrepreneurship should not be equated with commercialism. The tools are not the same, and we are not talking about maximizing revenues for universities. We are talking about maximizing the impact that universities can have.

You say universities should do more to solve world problems. What's preventing that?

The sort of intellectual battle you see is, in some ways, between a discipline and work designed to advance within a discipline versus a problem orientation that is multidisciplinary in nature. Engineering is a good example. Engineering is problem-oriented by definition, but...