The UK has ambitions to be one of the best places in the world to start and grow a business. But if we are serious about innovation, productivity and growth, we need to ask an earlier question: are we doing enough to help people develop entrepreneurial capabilities in the first place?

Universities have made significant progress. Enterprise is increasingly visible through teaching, student start-up support, research commercialisation and links with business. Yet provision is far from consistent, and entrepreneurship is still too often viewed as something for students who already have a business idea rather than a capability that matters to everyone.

Being entrepreneurial is not simply about becoming a founder. It is about recognising opportunities, solving problems, experimenting, working with others and creating value in employment, public services and communities. Those capabilities matter as much to a graduate entering a large organisation as to someone launching a venture.

The question for universities is therefore not only how many start-ups they support, but how widely entrepreneurial learning and opportunity are available, how deeply they are embedded and what difference they make. We also need to understand whether institutional strategies and resources are keeping pace with the ambitions we have for enterprise education.

This week, NCEE and Universities UK are launching a UK-wide Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Survey to build a clearer evidence base about what universities do, where progress is being made and where challenges remain. The findings will contribute to discussion around Universities UK’s Future Innovators work and help inform NCEE’s future activity.

Alongside the survey, we are inviting universities to share examples of interesting and effective practice. What approaches are making a difference? What have institutions learnt, including from initiatives that have not worked as expected? Over the coming weeks, we will explore these questions through a series of short articles and invite the sector to join the conversation.