Abstract:
The Kenya’s education sector is a dynamic one and highly competitive with the increase of both private and public universities. Public universities have been relying on capitation fund and own source revenue. Many of them are getting government sponsored programs allocations lower than their declared capacity and they have been unable to get adequate numbers of students for self sponsored programs. With this precarious scenario the management of public universities are realizing the need for strategic innovations on own source revenue. This study aimed at finding the relationship between strategic innovation and growth of public universities in Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were to establish the influence of marketing innovation and product innovation on growth of public universities in Kenya. The study was based on descriptive research design. Census survey was used to select all public universities and a purposive sampling was used to select the Finance officer and Registrar Administration, of all public universities in Kenya. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Study findings reveal that Marketing Innovation (β =0.627, p < 0.05), and product innovation (β = 0.334, p < 0.05) had significant effect on growth of public universities. It was established and concluded that there existed a positive relationship between strategic innovation and growth of public universities in Kenya. The researcher recommends that there is the need for university management to adopt strategic innovations in order to enhance growth of their institutions and their long term survival.
