Business environment has changed in past decades towards key success pillars of innovation and innovative business models based on superior customer knowledge (Kellen, 2003). This change is evermore reflected in the behavior of universities. Leading universities all over the world play a significant role in stimulating and sustaining economic activities and business development. Besides the two original mission pillars – education (teaching) and research – many universities adopted the third pillar focused on efforts regarding economic development activities, such as technology transfer that supports the modernization of low-tech and mid-tech firms or the creation of new innovative businesses (Zawdie, 2010). Orientation towards this third pillar leads to the creation and development of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems – either directly at universities or in close cooperation with innovation-focused institutions. Besides these changes, the focus on sustainability is also getting stronger. Thus there are more and more Entrepreneurial Ecosystems which concentrate on supporting sustainable and socially oriented innovations rather than purely technology-oriented (Volkmann et al., 2021). The author´s home university, Brno University of Technology, offers several isolated programs (typically within particular faculties) to support the entrepreneurial activities of its students and academia. The vision for the next couple of years is the development of an integrated cross-university platform via the University Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. The EE constructed should consider placing a major focus on support for sustainable and social entrepreneurship and respective innovations. The ambition of this project is to perform qualitative research on the leading U.S. Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EE) using observations, in-depth structured and semi-structured interviews, and also direct EE program participation. The expected outcome is a full set of best practices including the structure of programs offered by EE, organizational structures of EE within the university structure, possible ways of EE funding, major aspects for EE sustainability, metrics and measures of EE success and society impact, and others. These outcomes will be compared to the author's own experience with leading European University EE platforms (in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Germany) and also to the actual status at the Brno University of Technology. Finally, a detailed step-by-step recommendation for further EE development will be formulated. These recommendations will be useful not only for the author´s home university but for any EE worldwide in a similar phase of development.

Klíčová slova
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem; Entrepreneurial skills; Enterprising skills; Entrepreneurial education; Support of entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurial University; University Entrepreneurship Center