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.