Institutions of higher education face unprecedented challenges in serving their students and greater society. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted research and education globally, colleges and universities had been working for decades to better respond to societal, student, and faculty needs. The full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on future student enrollment and revenue is unknown. If universities cannot adapt rapidly and effectively, they face the risk of becoming irrelevant or, at least, serving a diminished societal role in the future. One way to respond to such concerns is by shifting foci at institutions of higher education toward programming that further enhances institutions' contributions to long-term social and economic well-being and makes this impact obvious. In this article, the authors describe a variety of faculty I&E and review results of a 2019 survey across 99 diverse U.S. institutions of higher education that found misalignment between institutional-level innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) priorities and the current reward system for university faculty. The authors argue that revisions to promotion and tenure-related structures are needed to better support faculty and help translate their I&E to enhance academia's contribution to social and economic well-being.