Entrepreneurship thrives on clarity and focus but our universities have become masters of complexity

It's doubtful that many vice-chancellors in the UK have ever heard of Peter Drucker’s subliminal book Innovation and Entrepreneurship let alone read it.

First published forty years ago, the book argued that entrepreneurship was not a rare gift possessed by a few but a discipline that every organisation could and should practise. At its heart was a simple message namely innovation is not optional but the essential activity that determines whether institutions thrive or decline.

Nearly forty years later, that warning could have been written for our universities today. Across the UK, higher education is facing a storm of financial and demographic pressures.

The number of 18-year-olds in the population is rising, yet many institutions are struggling to recruit. International student numbe