The Research University as Comprehensive Knowledge Enterprise: the Reconceptualization of Arizona State University as a Prototype for a New American University

While the Glion Colloquia have brought together university leaders from throughout the world to share their perspectives on a comprehensive array of critical issues confronting higher education, perhaps none is more imperative to consider than the role of the research university in an innovation-driven society. Research universities both in the United States and around the world are the primary source of totally new knowledge and innovation that drives the global economy and provides those of us in advanced nations with the standard of living that we have come to take for granted. The impetus to advance innovation distinguishes the research university from other institutional forms in higher education in the twenty-first century. Indeed the research university may be defined as a comprehensive knowledge enterprise committed to discovery, creativity, and innovation. If we do not embrace the imperative for what has been termed “perpetual innovation”—and by this I mean innovation in both products and process as well as the organizational design of institutions themselves—not only the outcomes of academic research but also our collective standard of living will decline, our ways of life will be threatened, and opportunities for the success of future generations will be diminished.