A Higher Education System enabling Entrepreneurial mindset for the Sustainable Knowledge Society: an Italian case

Innovation and entrepreneurship are crucial processes for the economic growth, productivity and employment, and thus for the competitiveness of countries and regional systems. In particular, entrepreneurship based on science and technology seems to be very effective for this ambitious goal. The development of entrepreneurial attitudes in engineers and scientists requires a significant change of the higher education systems, that have to integrate education and research, to design and experiment sustainable innovation processes and practices. Framed in these premises, and on the basis of a real case, the paper aims to investigate which principles, actors and processes should characterize the operational model of a higher education system to develop an entrepreneurial mindset in engineers.