Academic entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial academics

Quiz: Which one of these faculty members is the innovator?

One publishes a book so students can learn object-oriented systems analysis and design in a highly practical and accessible way.

Another invents a miscoscope so every teaching lab can enjoy advanced imaging at an affordable price.

Answer: Both. But most would pick the latter.

Martin Meyer, in "Academic entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial academics? Research-based ventures and public support mechanisms" argues one may indeed distinguish at least two breeds of innovation agents at a university: the ‘entrepreneurial academic’ and the ‘academic entrepreneur’, the latter being the archetypical start-up entrepreneur and the former resembling the ‘innovative’ faculty member.

Innovators do not necessarily have to set up a fast–growing company but can use other avenues to create impact. Both types of innovators move the university towards being a significant actor on its own terms.

What are we doing for students?

Everyone asks this question. Even Sen. Jack Hart, during an interview he and I were doing for the Dorchester newspaper, asked how are you helping students get good jobs in the innovation economy?

Thanks to our Entrepreneur in Residence, Dan Phillips, we are doing a lot. Just a few weeks ago, over 80 students, with some having to be turned away, came to hear Dan talk about what it is like to work in a venture backed start-up, and to sign-up for a chance at a paid internship. Students lined up to give Dan their cards following his presentation!

Dan has spent the last 25 years as an executive with four venture capital backed software companies. The most recent was as CEO of SilverBack Technologies which was acquired by Dell Inc. Dan has a great appreciation for the quality and culture of UMass Boston students as he has self funded his own Scholarship/Mentor program for our students over the last 15 years.

Two students, Wararat Tipwimolratchai and Wei Tang, have already been selected by Brighton House Associates, a venture backed start-up company in Marlborough. Much more to come in this one year pilot effort.

Finding quality start up internship opportunities is extraordinarily difficult. Students at places like MIT and Stanford line up for jobs. But for the first time, UMass Boston students have the opportunity. They are a perfect match for start-up companies.

With the opening of the VDC in early 2009, we will be able to house the venture backed firms and internships right here on campus, in Wheatley where our 18,000 sf center is in the final stages of being constructed.

We’ve reached out to Student Affairs as well as the deans to locate interested students with marketing, finance, information systems, computer science and economics backgrounds. Dan plans to run a session for students every two months.

How do you find time to work with us?

Faculty members tell me over and over again that they have dozens of other priorities and have precious little time for innovation.

Well, what’s your vision for what you’d like to create at the university? I believe that if you don’t have something worth doing, that you are absolutely passionate about, you won't find a way to make it happen.

Even so, everybody is busy and there is the yawning chasm between rhetoric and reality. So the university has to be part of the solution.

So I constantly advocate for measures to make it easier for faculty members to pursue their vision:

1. How have they been equipped to be an innovator? What training have they received? What tools have they been supplied with?

2. Do they have access to an innovation coach or mentor? Is there an innovation expert in their department who will help them develop their breakout idea?

3. How easy is it for them to get access to experimental funding? How long would it take to get a few thousand dollars in seed money? How many levels of bureaucracy would they have to go through?

5. Do the university’s management processes—budgeting, planning, staffing, etc.—support their work as an innovator or hinder it?

The truth about the university is there’s no shortage of ideas bouncing around. The trick is to align incentives to execute them. Its how a university advances. Or not.

When should you engage with the VDC?

Most of the time, faculty come to us with just a few days left before they publish their research results, wanting to talk about a patent, or with a year left of a five year project, looking for continued funding.

The time to talk to us is before you think you have to, meaning at the beginning of your project, when you are designing it.

When we engage then, we can talk about doing something with anticipated research results beyond a publication. Novel dissemination plans are key. Funders like them because it shows you have thought through your project.

There are lots of possibilities, such as a subscription newsletter or journal, webinar, videos, research, testing, or design operation, or even a product, many of which can become revenue generators.

Engaging us early means learning how to expand your concept of your project team. Success these days in every field requires a range of skills, including ours. We can save you lots of headaches and heartaches.

What is it like working with us?

As in as in all partnerships, we work hard to earn each others' trust. Because sometimes the conversations are difficult.

But we do have a distinct style of working. Its more like a start-up than a service unit. So its not for everyone.

We feel more like impudent underdogs instead of stuffed shirts, and that is exactly the spirit we encourage.

We say we are a are lean team. Like you, we try to spend as little money as possible to achieve great results.

Like a start-up, everyone does everything, no matter what title they have. There is no sense of entitlement, also the spirit we encourage.

We subscribe to learning by doing. We are more of a coach than assistant.

Fact is most entrepreneurs want to implement, reflect, take action and step-by-step, achieve their own results. But they do appreciate the effective questions we ask and the feedback we provide. Because we excel on the execution side - the “how are we going to get there, and keep it going” - the stuff they feel kind of lost trying to deal with at the university.

So we make great partners.

We underscore that you’ll not find more passionate allies. When you think you are ready to fly, we pull out all the stops - find allies, leverage resources, locate space, whatever it takes to move forward.

We are happy when your program grows in size, strength, and impact. When we help you get to the top of a mountain, we will arrive there also.

Tour by Goody Clancy

Another day, another tour. But this one was very special. The project managers and architects retained to do the feasibility study for UMass Boston’s new integrated science building visited the soon to be completed Venture Development Center.

This is a different team than the one which designed the Venture Development Center, which is Sasaki Associates and RDK Engineers.

The tone was set by John Benson, senior program manager at the state’s Division of Capital Asset Management, who said “This is a big bet for the campus.” He said its not hard to envision UMass Boston becoming the dominant campus in the system.

The Venture Development Center represents state-of-the-art in design for research and development, an intensely social activity, according to many on the team. Experience with similar projects at other universities has been positive, according to Chris Cowansage principal of sst planners.

The team thought we struck the right balance between supplied plug and play infrastructure and specialized equipment users would supply.

Benson also said the VDC is a good example of the new model in research and development parks “of” the university versus “at” the university.

The team had never seen video conferencing and broadcasting integrated in a lab, and did not understand why there were two plasma screens in each. We explained this is an advanced feature permitting remote collaboration.

The team also liked that private offices were not integrated into the labs, rather, being adjacent, allowing assignment flexibility. Not all will want an office. The team thought up to six persons could use one of the labs comfortably.

The team was really impressed by the measures taken to reduce energy use with high-efficiency lighting; advanced heating, ventilating, and cooling equipment; and many passive solar features. These will generate savings more than offsetting the cost of operating the facility.

What did they enjoy most of all? The vast expanse of glass and terrace overlooking the harbor. Bernard Dooley, senior associate at Goody Clancy, thought we’d be overwhelmed with people wanting to use the facility.

What services do we deliver?

With a puzzled look, I am often asked, by faculty, what services does the VDC deliver?

And I always answer by first saying who our client is. The client always is the entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is an innovator who recognizes an opportunity to introduce something valuable, and who raises the necessary money, assembles the team and organizes an operation to exploit the opportunity.

In our university setting, entrepreneurs are easily recognized, the ones who create a new program, consortia, center, organization, product, process or company. Their motivation varies - might be social impact, commercial gain or creative expression. But all want to make a genuine different.

But they have a powerful vision for what they’d like to create at the university. And they want to find a way to make it happen.

A large organization's bureaucracy is not kind to entrepreneurs. It wears them down. We love entrepreneurs, though, because they are moving the university forward. We are really good at mobilizing the university behind them, lighting their load, speeding their progress, getting them recognition.

Usually we meet with the entrepreneur every month or so, helping them:

• Build a business case.
• Identify and obtain funding.
• Develop proposals and budgets.
• Create operational plans.
• Experiment with what works and doesn't.
• Set financial sustainability as an outcome.

We also recognize that for big thinkers, its the little things that make for out and out success, like help with university rules, regulations, agreements, the stuff they feel kind of lost trying to deal with.

What do you want to accomplish?

In conversations with faculty members, I hear over and over again that they have dozens of other priorities. The conversations inevitably move to what to throw overboard to make room for innovation.

Those seeking external funding for research really don't have choice: Not a day goes by without seeing a request for proposals from a funding agency looking for the transformative, the translational, the sustainable. But the fact that everybody says they are too busy to innovate demonstrates the yawning chasm between rhetoric and reality.

Conversations about what to stop doing are inherently difficult and divisive. Conversations about the best ways to pursue a specific goal are much more productive. They begin only if you have something worth doing, otherwise we won't find a way to make it happen.

The right question is: What do you want to accomplish? Decisions about how to assign resources are much easier when you have a great idea.

These questions seem to get the wheels turning in a positive direction, and unearth their real priorities:

1. What motivates you to go to work everyday?

2. When was the last time you proposed a new idea to your dean? How was that idea received?

3. If you could run the university by yourself for a day, what changes would you make and why?

4. If you could take a sabbatical, what would you do and why?

5. If you could work for any university of your choice, which one would it be and why?

6. If you could create your own business, what would it be and how would you run it?

I also ask these questions of myself to figure out how to make it easier for that faculty member to pursue their idea:

1. How have they been equipped to be an innovator? What training have they received? What tools have they been supplied with?

2. Do they have access to an innovation coach or mentor? Is there an innovation expert in their unit who will help them develop their breakout idea?

3. How easy is it for them to get access to experimental funding? How long would it take to get a few thousand dollars in seed money? How many levels of bureaucracy would they have to go through?

4. Is innovation a formal part of their job description? Does their compensation depend in part on their innovation performance?

5. Does the university’s management processes—budgeting, planning, staffing, etc.—support their work as an innovator or hinder it?

The truth about the university is there’s no shortage of ideas bouncing around. Like just about everything else, execution is the result of collaboration, decisiveness, discipline and hard work. All of which faculty members are quite good at when they are driven by a vision.

Social venturing for activists

so·cial en·ter·prise (n.)

An organization or venture that advances its social mission through entrepreneurial, earned income strategies.

This is a new model some non governmental organizations and donors are trying in the search for more powerful, lasting social impact. This model seems tailor made for a university campus like UMass Boston that prizes its engagement with the community to improve the human condition. I see growing interest in social enterprise as a strategy for addressing some of our most pressing problems.

It is not that hard to put together a for-profit arm, but to have it be a significant contributor to the core mission requires considerable strategic work. But my hunch is that the biggest challenge is that most social activists struggle to make the culture change that is required within the organization to even explore this model.

A social enterprise is one where the social aims are of equal importance to its commercial activities. Like any business, a social enterprise focuses on generating an income through the sale of goods and services to a market but the added value of a social enterprise comes from the way in which it uses its profits to maximize social, community or environmental benefits.

An announcement of this year's the winner of the MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition represents a coming of age of sorts for social ventures. A social venture won the grand prize of what is arguably the leading business plan competition in the world. Diagnostic for All is a not-for-profit venture from Harvard University aimed at delivering cheap, dispensable diagnostic tests to impoverished countries.

Harvard Business School gave legitimacy and gravitas to social ventures by creating the Social Enterprise Initiative in 1993, which has published more than 400 cases and teaching notes on topics related to social enterprise. It was the first formal academic program in the field. HBS has a great article called The Future of Social Enterprise on the current state of the field.

On the donor side, social venturing is picking up steam, especially as a number of high-profile business leaders (like Bill Gates) adopt this model for their charitable giving.

On the seeking side, the competition for donations and gifts seems to get tighter every year. And so-called donor fatigue seems to be becoming almost epidemic. That is in part why organizations are exploring ventures.

Investors like it when you're making just enough to pay your program expenses. It shows you've thought about sustaining your venture; it shows you have the discipline to keep your expenses low; but above all, it means you don't need them. The reason they like it when you don't need them is because that quality is what makes ventures succeed. The more you don't need them, the more they will invest.

Non profits are actually really good at identifying unserved needs and opportunities for programs and services. They also know best how to tailor a service for their particular client base, and can provide the kinds of supports required to make such a venture work. These attributes can result in community-changing ventures.

Fourth Sector Network has teamed with the Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest to produce a new edition of A BUSINESS PLANNING GUIDE TO DEVELOPING A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE, a pragmatic tool to assess if the venture model is right for you and the range of stakeholders that have a connection with your program.

Interview with Mass Media

This interview with UMass Boston's student newspaper follows the post Standing Room Only about our new program to hook up students with ventures:

Mr. Brah, my name is Greg Bluestein and I report for UMB's Mass Media. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions on the upcoming program that you are working with concerning getting UMB students getting first picks on highly competitive internships.

Greg: What exactly is this program?

Bill: It’s a paid internship program that connects UMass Boston students with venture capital firms and their portfolio companies in the Boston metropolitan area. It was conceived by Dan Phillips, our Entrepreneur in Residence.

Greg: How can students become part of it?

Bill: They can attend the next session in two months where students can hear what it is like to work in a start-up, and to sign-up for a chance at an internship. We'll be sure to post the information in a variety of places in an effort to reach out to as many students as possible.

Greg: About how many students per year will be able to benefit from this program?

Bill: Its a pilot program so we'll know after this year. There are lots of opportunities and lots of students interested. Two students have already been selected by a start-up company. We are going to run a one-hour session every two months where students can hear what it is like to work in a start-up, and to sign-up for a chance at an internship. Over 80 students attended the first session on October 1st, and 30 submitted resumes.

Greg: How were you able to put this program together?

Bill: The Venture Development Center likes to say that it brings the innovation economy to the campus. We are beginning with our students. Phil Quaglieri, Dean of the College of Management, introduced us to Dan Phillips.

Dan has spent the last 25 years as an executive with four venture capital backed software companies. Two of these companies executed IPO’s and two were acquired by fortune 200 companies. The most prominent was as COO of Concord Communications which attained an $800,000,000 market cap and the most recent was as CEO of SilverBack Technologies which was acquired by Dell Inc.

After a few meetings, Phil and I decided to support Dan and offer venture internship opportunity to all students at UMass Boston.

Greg: How long will this program be running?

Bill: Its a one year pilot program. Dan is already trying to raise funds to scale it up for next year. A program like this must be staffed in order to be successful. Ideally, the students would receive academic credit too, so the challenge is to integrate the internships into the academic programs at UMass Boston.

Ideally, over the next three years, we’d like the venture backed firms to come to our students! With the opening of the VDC in early 2009, we will be able to house the venture backed firms and internships right here on campus, in Wheatley where our 18,000 sf center is in the final stages of being constructed.

Greg: Why was it created?

Bill: We want to establish UMass Boston as a key producer of talent needed by the innovation economy. UMass Boston students have all of the qualities venture backed start-up companies look for. They are smart, hungry, loyal, and work hard for everything they achieve. Yet they are overlooked. Venture firms normally go hunting for talent at places like Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Chicago, Stanford and Berkeley, where students literally line up for the opportunity. But Dan's connections to the area's venture capital firms allow UMass Boston students to be first in line for chances at internships at the portfolio companies they invest in in the Boston metropolitan area.

Greg: Has UMB ever created any program like this before? Where did the idea come from?

Bill: This is a first for UMass Boston, thanks to Dan Phillips. He has a great appreciation for the quality and culture of the UMass Boston student body as he has self funded his own Scholarship/Mentor program for UMass Boston students over the last 15 years. What a gratifying sight, students in a cue to give Dan their cards following his presentation on October 1st!

Greg: If there is anything else you think I should know that I have not asked about, please feel free to tell me.

Bill: Venture capital is a highly competitive industry and an internship can give students the experience needed to secure a good job in the future. Furthermore, an internship will allow them to meet people in the industry who they can later network with. Finding quality start up internship opportunities is extraordinarily difficult. Now UMass Boston students have the opportunity to hook up with a venture and live happily ever after!

Capitalism to the rescue

On Sand Hill Road, the wide avenue in Silicon Valley lined with some of the country’s most powerful venture-capital firms, hundreds of millions of dollars pours into green technologies, according to a feature in the New York Times.

Doing well has always been about timing. Many a sound plan has failed because it was too early or too late. But progressive investors could see this day coming, and a few of them now will make a lot of money.

In a stint a little over ten years ago with the Environmental Business Council of the US, we labored to rally the business community around the Clinton-Gore environmental technology strategy (Bridge to a Sustainable Future: National Environmental Technology Strategy) which we helped shape. Its gratifying to finally see the investor interest.

Some dismiss the greening of venture capital as their latest effort to make a lot of money, not to save the environment. Others are saying that the venture capitalists are recklessly betting the firm on perhaps an idealistic quest. If the results are positive, I say: What’s wrong with doing-well-by-doing-good?

Interview with Public Purpose magazine

Chancellor Motley, my name is Cheryl Fields, a writer for Public Purpose magazine, published by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. I am getting the perspectives of presidents and chancellors involved in developing innovative partnerships with business. I have spoken with Richard Antonak, William Brah, and Christine DePalma, so I have background information on what is going on with the Venture Development Center.

Fields: One thing I'm interested in is whether you see the VDC as more of an outlet to extend and commercialize your faculty members' research--or whether the overall aim is more in terms of the institution's commitment to (or the expectation from the state) to aid economic development.

Motley: I see the Venture Development Center as adding a powerful new dimension to our long-standing commitment to make a difference in the communities the University of Massachusetts Boston serves – locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Top faculty and students want the results of their research put to use for both social and economic betterment.

Fields: Is a major goal to attract more basic research funding for traditional faculty research?

Motley: Attracting more basic research funding is an ongoing goal here at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and certainly the Venture Development Center will strengthen our reputation as a research university. Equally important is that the VDC will help us attract top faculty and students who are interested in research and development.

Fields: Do you see the VDC as helping to use the advantage of your urban location to assist in the developing ideas from faculty or entrepreneurs in other areas of the state, for example, UMass-Amherst?

Motley: The University of Massachusetts Boston collaborates closely with the four other campuses of the UMass system. For example, the campuses recently completed a joint strategy for life science research and development, and we will continue to look for ways to collaborate and share the unique strengths of our individual campuses. We have encouraged the other campuses to use the Venture Development Center, and we will continue to do so.

Fields: In developing the center, did you receive advice froom other presidents involved in incubators and the like about what NOT to do?

Motley: Whenever you take on a project like this, you get a lot of suggestions and opinions. I think the greatest encouragement has been around thinking of and planning for the Venture Development Center as an investment in the future of the University of Massachusetts Boston, realizing that the benefits to our research efforts, reputation, and recruitment will be great.

Fields: Five years from now, what would success look like? What benchmarks will you use to measure the VDC's success?

Motley: What we are trying to do at the University of Massachusetts Boston is to build a more collaborative, more innovative urban research university. We have identified the areas of strength where we think we can grow and partner with others, including industry. So I look for the Venture Development Center to help catalyze this growth and collaboration, and when we start to see the benefits of that growth and collaboration, that will be an initial benchmark for success.

Fields: Thanks very much for your help with this story.

Why time begins at the end of your project

Why time begins at the end of your project

Satisfied with research results? Great. Have you thought of doing something with them that generates value beyond a publication? You work long and hard to secure a competitive grant. But you rarely stop and think of what is possible. Probably in part because it is beyond your experience, so it seems like a hugh mountain to climb.

But not any more. Sure, its still hard work, but you’ll have a partner. For us, research results are the beginning of the journey you thought was over.

We are good at putting results into motion through a variety of pathways to make a genuine difference.

Value creation is collaborative since few individuals possess the necessary range of skills to accomplish it on their own. You need deep thinkers who conceive the vision - you, plus those who can get the innovation really to work, and those who communicate the advantages of the innovation so it is used. We put this team together.

Some try do this on their own. Its possible, but mighty hard. Here on campus, the Boston Science Partnership is a great example. A little coaching from us can make what you are doing more competitive, more productive, and more impactful.

Why? We possess maniacal focus and drive and a willingness to take risk; move very quickly (after all, “better to fail quickly then to succeed too slowly”), and are motivated by limitless potential to make a difference. Its in our genes.

We call what we do innovation through collaboration. Why should you care? Because you want to see something come from all of your hard work and creativity. Its rewarding. How do we know? We've done it before, many times.

Reason #1 - You need to be connected

What’s impressive about Boston is not just scientific advances or technological breakthroughs. Instead, its edge derives from a habitat that is tuned to turn ideas into products and take them rapidly to market by creating new firms.

So why you want to be in Boston is to be connected to this ecosystem. At the VDC, you are connected. To leading research universities that interact with industry, an exceptionally talented and highly mobile work force, and experienced support services in such areas as finance, law, accounting, headhunting, and marketing, all specializing in helping ventures form and grow.

The VDC works closely with 31 other universities in the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Organization and the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center. We also work with the John Adams Innovation Institute, the Massachusetts Life Science Board, MassInsight Corporation. This network shapes strategic alliances among public and private universities, teaching hospitals, government and industry which expand the state’s research, development and economic leadership in emerging technologies, and translates these capabilities into commercial development activities.

Researchers investigate carbon neutrality

In a race for the greenest of the laurels, not a day goes by without another announcement about going “carbon neutral.”

Carbon neutral organizations are those that measure CO2 emissions, work to reduce or eliminate them, and then attempt to offset those that cannot be eliminated through schemes such as the purchase of carbon offsets, tree planting and clean energy alternatives.

Among the world's 195 nations, the starting pistol was fired earlier this year in Monaco at the annual meeting of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Program. Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Costa Rica formally signed up to go zero carbon, competing to be the first to go entirely carbon neutral.

One United Nations member state already claims to have beaten them all. The Vatican announced last year that it was becoming the world's first – but is widely held to have cheated since it failed to count the carbon emitted by its traveling officials.

Among the many other entities that have made the carbon neutral pledge are Abbott, Dell, the Super Bowl, the Whole Foods, the World Bank—even rock bands like the Rolling Stones and Coldplay, and surfer Kelly Slater. New Hampshire University claims it is the first carbon-neutral university campus.

In the face of widespread concern about global warming, many organizations are going carbon neutral. Or are they?

Professors Amanda Ball and Markus Milne of the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) have been awarded a Marsden research grant ($824,000 over three years) to examine claims of being carbon neutral. Along with colleagues Professor David Levy (UMass - Boston) and Professor Kevin Anderson (Tyndall Centre at Manchester, UK), professors Ball and Milne will investigate organization and agency claims, policies, and practices in relation to carbon neutrality. This will be achieved through a series of in-depth case studies of organizations that are pursuing this goal, along with evidence from certification agencies, auditors, and others involved in measuring, managing and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.

Credible carbon neutrality programs require serious attention to emissions reduction prior to offsetting. So far, however, little work has attempted to systematically understand the actual dynamics of organizational emissions reduction programs, key motives that drive or inhibit action, or critically scrutinize obvious tensions and paradoxical motives between organizational desires to reduce ecological impacts and desires to grow and succeed economically. Achieving carbon neutrality requires organizations to think differently as well as change their practices. The researchers aim to uncover exactly what managers in an array of organizations mean by ‘carbon-neutrality’, and how they believe it can be achieved in their organizations. This side of the issue has not yet been examined as fully as the economic and technological aspects.

New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has already set her country the goal of being the world's first carbon-neutral country. It aims to generate 90 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025, and to halve its transport emissions per head by 2040. But the country has a particular problem with agriculture, which accounts for half its emissions of greenhouse gases.

The Marsden Fund supports excellence in leading-edge research in New Zealand. Projects are selected annually in a rigorous process by nine panels of experts who are guided by the opinions of world-leading referees. The Fund is administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Levy has co-edited two books, titled, “The Business of Global Environmental Governance”, (MIT Press,2005), and "The Business of Climate Change", (Greenleaf Publishing, 2005).

Reason #2 - You are ready for action

The second reason to collaborate with the Venture Development Center:

We are better at action than anyone else. Talk is important. But when the time for talk is over, you turn to the VDC. We are passionate about putting into action creative ideas to make a genuine difference.

You are excellent at starting novel things. We excel on the execution side, the stuff you feel kind of lost trying to deal with at the university.

So, we make a great team.

Standing room only

Thanks to Entrepreneur in Residence, Dan Phillips, over 80 students, with some having to be turned away, came on October 1, 2008 to hear him talk about what it is like to work in a start-up, and to sign-up for a chance at an internship.

The firms like what they see at UMass Boston. Two students, Wararat Tipwimolratchai and Wei Tang, have already been selected by Brighton House Associates venture backed start-up company in Marlborough. There is much more to come.

The College of Management and the Venture Development Center are supporting a university-wide internship program targeted at students who want to work for venture-backed start up companies in the Boston metropolitan area.

These companies are in a range of businesses including novel cancer therapeutics, home care services to the elderly, natural pharmacy, low-cost battery system, advanced microarray instruments, on-demand social media platform, and digital semiconductors.

Students can step into a job needing no more assistance than any other senior level employee. All students are welcome.

There's no doubt that venture capital is a highly competitive industry and an internship can give students the experience needed to secure a good job in the future. Furthermore, an internship will allow them to meet people in the industry who they can later network with.

Finding quality start up internship opportunities is extraordinarily difficult. Students at places like MIT and Stanford line up for jobs. But for the first time, UMass Boston students have the opportunity. What a gratifying sight, students in a cue to give Dan their cards following his presentation!

Dan has spent the last 25 years as an executive with four venture capital backed software companies. Two of these companies executed IPO’s and two were acquired by fortune 200 companies. The most prominent was as COO of Concord Communications which attained an $800,000,000 market cap and the most recent was as CEO of SilverBack Technologies which was acquired by Dell Inc.

Satisfying two masters

Not a day goes by without seeing a request for proposals from a federal science agency seeking “interdisciplinary efforts to address scientific challenges leading to a new and truly transformative approach.”

Arguably, the most dynamic research at disciplinary frontiers and in novel terrains is interdisciplinary. But you have to defy gravity to achieve it. Because every day, biologists just talk to biologists, economists talk to economists, and psychologists to psychologists.

Even in notably successful interdisciplinary research programs, where there is a concerted effort to integrate of knowledge and modes of thinking, the approval of peers sways assessment. Researchers often are forced to evaluate the degree to which their work is reasonably consistent with antecedent disciplinary knowledge.

This is the conclusion of a paper entitled “Assessing Interdisciplinary Work at the Frontier” by Veronica Boix Mansilla and Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In their study, they looked at the way in which the quality of interdisciplinary work is determined at exemplary interdisciplinary institutes and programs around the nation.

At the end of the day, success of faculty is tied to disciplinary recognition. Sure, there is a tremendous sense of freedom associated to breaking disciplinary rules, and trying to transform understanding.

But interdisciplinary work takes a lot of effort. A lot of compromises and negotiations are in order. Members of interdisciplinary research programs have to spend time to recognize the relevance of others' findings to their own scholarship.

The authors conclude that interdisciplinary work gains its strength from its keen awareness of the provisional status of its findings. When you are at the cutting edge of anything, by definition you're taking risks that most do not take.