It is difficult to discuss American universities in the specific context of entrepreneurship without falling into a celebrationist (but not, one hopes, a complacent) mode. I say this because, from an international comparative perspective, one can hardly reject the conclusion that American universities have been uniquely successful in the scope and intensity of their contributions to entrepreneurship. This success stems largely from their own capacity for novelty and dynamism, which deserves the adjective “entrepreneurial” as well. The entrepreneurial perspective is only one of many possible perspectives from which one might examine the operation of American universities, and not necessarily the most important one. The European continent is endowed with numerous universities of great intellectual distinction, many of which have faculties who would look with deep disdain, if not total disbelief, at the idea that centers of learning should ever be judged by such a philistine standard. I have more than a little sympathy with that point of view. But in a world in which economic activity is becoming, indeed already has become, highly knowledge-intensive, it would be unrealistic, and perhaps even impolitic, to expect universities to remain withdrawn from the changing needs of their economic environments. The high degree of responsiveness to these changing needs has long been the most distinctive feature of American universities, at least as far back as the passage of the Morrill Act of 1862, which established the land grant college system.