Innovation, entrepreneurship, promotion, and tenure

Academic promotion and tenure (P&T) processes that typically prioritize faculty grants and publications can fail to fully assess and value entrepreneurial, innovative endeavors (1) that can produce the kind of societal impacts that universities are increasingly being called on to provide and that many faculty and students increasingly prioritize (2, 3). A more inclusive assessment of scholarship and creative activity to better recognize and reward innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) will require 'broadening the bar' (4) to reflect evolving forms of faculty impact without diluting or increasing the requirements for advancement. Expanding what we value as scholarship can also help augment who we value as scholars and thus support a more innovative and diverse professoriate. We highlight work by the Promotion and Tenure-Innovation and Entrepreneurship (PTIE) coalition to promote policies and practices to recognize the impact of faculty I&E. We posit that this strategy can be broadly applicable (beyond I&E) to recognize the many and evolving dimensions along which faculty create societal impacts.