Strategic Management of Universities for Regional Competitiveness

Strategic management of universities is crucial for the regional competitiveness due to the high impact of universities on the economic growth of regions through entrepreneurial training and support. The study aimed to investigate the HEInnovate self-assessment tool, valuable in building entrepreneurship-oriented strategy, by considering the case of Turan University. The tool can be used to study entrepreneurial capabilities of the university and make strong management decisions. The self-assessment allows getting feedback from all stakeholders, including external ones, which helps to make institutional changes to influence the regional economic growth. The framework of the research is based on the theories of strategic management and regional competitiveness, which can be deployed with the HEInnovate self-assessment recommendations and findings. The research methodology comprises objective and functional approaches to system analysis. HEInnovate self-assessment by Turan university revealed some weaknesses in the university strategy and helped make some recommendations, namely, the university's entrepreneurial ecosystem must act as part of a regional business support ecosystem to provide input into local economic development, attract more international faculty and faculty with more practical experience, create an entrepreneurial culture across staff of the university, address a lack of internal structures to support staff, and improve university-business cooperation.