Universities are more entrepreneurial

Dr. Allan Gibb, University of Durham, in “Towards the Entrepreneurial University?” offers some observations on the emergence of the entrepreneurial university, one which has taken on a third mission, that of contributing its knowledge generated to society more directly.

Gibbs claims that entrepreneurial universities have a culture that is open to change and to the search for, and exploitation of, opportunities for innovation. They are managed by a strong steering core that helps them respond flexibly, strategically and coherently to opportunities. Across academic departments there are entrepreneurial champions. Key aspects of entrepreneurship education are embedded across the curriculum.

A great example is the University of Rochester. According to “Building a Better Entrepreneurial Education,” it is aggressively fostering entrepreneurial skills in fields like education, engineering, nursing, and music—and in the business department, too. Courses in entrepreneurship are found in six schools on campus. The goal is to foster leadership, management, and team-building qualities. Rochester’s brand of entrepreneurship is the “transformation of an idea into an enterprise that creates value—economic, social, cultural, or intellectual.”

At entrepreneurial universities, engagement with the stakeholder community is actively pursued. Funding is obtained not by pursuing philanthropy but by building credibility with key stakeholders. By such engagement the university becomes more of a learning organization.

Knowledge transfer programs are a feature at entrepreneurial universities. Interdisciplinary research and partnerships with external stakeholders are more important in terms of their contribution to innovation than patents, licensing and spin-off activity.

The latest evolutionary stage of the university as an institution is generating debate and tension in academia, similar to what took place a hundred years ago concerning the emergence of the research university. At that time, many argued that the demands of research would compromise the university's teaching mission.

Today, who would argue that knowledge generated by research doesn’t infuse teaching with relevance and vitality? Similarly, the ambivalence to universities' added entrepreneurial role is likely to change.

Gibb thinks the new dimension to its mission is rather Victorian, revisiting the 19th-century view that higher education is for imaginatively using knowledge.

Overcoming barriers to producing multidisciplinary knowledge

Knowledge sharing among researchers within interdisciplinary communities may be critical for new discoveries. In spite of this, biologists tend to talk to biologists, economists tend to talk to economists, and psychologists tend to talk to psychologists. Co-locating them may be a helpful but insufficient step to generating multidisciplinary knowledge. Disciplinary subgroups hold contrary assumptions about the appropriate questions to be asked.

How can this be overcome? Kathleen L. McGinn gives and answer in in “Incompatible Assumptions: Barriers to Producing Multidisciplinary Knowledge in Communities of Scholarship”. A Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, she argues that interdisciplinary communities must first attend to the compatibility of assumptions held by sub-groups within the field. Understanding may stem from the potential for members to recognize the relevance of others' findings to their own scholarship.

In collaborative consortia, relate first, then act

Upfront negotiation regarding roles, resources, governance and so on might interfere with progress in collaborations addressing complex societal issues. So conclude Benyamin Lichtenstein et al., University of Massachusetts Boston, College of Management in Relational Space: Creating a Context for Innovation in Collaborative Consortia.

The authors completed a case study of The Sustainability Consortium – a voluntary association of about a dozen member organizations that have an interest in tackling sustainability. Initially focusing on relationships encouraged a higher degree of innovation in action projects.

In the Sustainability Consortium, it was nearly two years before the first project was clearly articulated. During that time participants met together in three three-day meetings. The focus of attention was the formation of what the authors call “relational space”: face-to-face personal interactions through which participants pursued open inquiry and learning, developed strong peer-based relationships, asked for and received help and support, and inspired each other in a variety of ways. Gradually, problems were articulated and framed, and action projects emerged.

What makes the bay area so cool?

The bay area, envied the world over for its industry of ideas, consistently grabs about 44% of the nation's venture capital investment. What is it about the bay area that makes it a hub for innovation?

Paul Graham ought to know. He is the founder of Y Combinator, a blend of boot camp, commune, and investor designed to help start-up companies get off the ground. Y Combinator used to alternate its activity between Boston and San Francisco every six months.

In "How to Start a Start-Up," Graham says the bay area “has the right kind of vibe.” It attracts a special kind of talent, the younger scientists, programmers, and creatives who drive innovation.

The bay area has everything they want:

• Authentic personality. Young-feeling, but not new.

• Smart people, which means universities, still tethered to their professors.

• An environment that tolerates oddness in which they feel they can best be themselves.

• Neighborhoods which are cheap, fun, and near the subway.
  

Nerds don't like to work in dreary office buildings that are a wasteland when the sun goes down. They like to head out for dinner then take the subway back to the office or lab to get some real work done, instead of going home to watch television. That's why creating business parks in the suburbs is futile.

When start-ups grow into big companies, and move to the suburbs, they still keep an r&d center near the Red Line. Otherwise they'd loose the younger talent.

What is unique about the bay area is the support system in such areas as finance, law, accounting, headhunting, and marketing, tuned to help ventures form and grow.

Ventures operating outside the bay area certainly succeed. But who would be willing to claim that a venture elsewhere wouldn't benefit from moving to the bay area?

Graham's advice to start-ups? "Get a place on the Red Line."
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Red line life line
To younger talent, the Red Line is pure magic. Its convenient, and quirky. Listen to their banter on Yelp.

Molly says: “It's supremely easy to get to anywhere worth going...I can hear the trains from my apartment, but it's worth it just to know they're there.”

John says: “I would have a difficult time functioning without it, and for that I am grateful.”

Kelly: “I like it, it's homey. I look up from my reading or video game to watch the city arrive and recede as we cross over the river. It's calming.”

Victor says: “And hey, you can go under the bay. How cool is that? It's pretty damn cool.”

Sarah says: “The seats are SO much more comfortable on the BART than on the T. :)”

But Jeffrey says: “Reupholster the seats. They're gross.”

Helen says: “I LIKE the gross aspects of public transit.“
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Graham has his favorites start-up places along the Red Line. He especially likes Berkeley, Davis, Inman, and Central.

In “Cities and Ambition” he says he always imagined that Berkeley would be the ideal place to be—that it would basically be Cambridge with good weather.

But when he finally tried living there a couple years ago, it turned out not to be. He says “it's not humming with ambition.” Its message is "live the good life."

“The people you find in Boston...are the kind of people who want to live where the smartest people are, even if that means living in an expensive, grubby place with bad weather."

There are plenty of smart people in the south. But he thinks the universities there are too spread apart, therefore diluted, while in the north, they are clustered, dozens withing a few miles of each other.

Lately, he thinks the north has the edge on ideas (in the whole world), the south the edge on ventures. Why? Investors tend to be more conservative in the north, more aggressive in the south. Facebook was started in the north. Boston investors had the first shot at them. But they said no, so Facebook moved to south and raised money there.

But for now, Graham says, "Boston just doesn't have the startup culture that the Valley does. It has more startup culture than anywhere else, but the gap between number 1 and number 2 is huge; nothing makes that clearer than alternating between them."

Since ideas are only one step upstream from economic power, says Graham, it's conceivable that the north will one day regain the edge.

How do you pitch a venture?

Here are the steps, and the likely questions you have to address to get funding, at each stage of the venture development process. The farther along you are, the more likely you will achieve investment.

1. Good product/service idea
Key questions: Is it a solution to a job users are trying really hard to get done? Who is the competition? Will they fail fast?
Most important point to make: About your market insight.

2. All-star team
Key question: Has the team succeeded in the past? Do they have special knowledge or skills in the area? Are they committed to the idea?
Most important point: Why the team you have assembled is the right one.

3. Breakthrough technology
Key question: Who owns the patents? Are there any good substitutes?
Most important point: Barriers to entry.

4. Prototype product/service
Key question: What will it take to launch a working product or service?
Most important point: Show a prototype or engineering resumes.

5. Working product
Key question: What does the product do? What’s the launch plan? Who’s on the marketing team?
Most important point: Live demonstration.

6. Micro-scale results
Key question: Who is the customer, and how do you know? What is the potential market size? What are the business economics?
Most important point: Lessons learned.

7. Promising results
Key question: Can you monetize that traffic (or drive traffic to that profitable destination?) Do you know why you’ve achieved those results?
Most important point: Revenue potential.

You can see that few individuals possess the necessary range of skills to accomplish all of these steps 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.

Ventures come in all flavors

Some cast enterprise as the enemy of social concerns. Here are examples of what can be accomplished by joining social concerns with private enterprise:

• Diagnostic-For-All, that will deliver affordable point-of-care diagnostic solutions to the global medical community.

• Seeding Labs, which reclaims and refurbishes laboratory equipment from universities, hospitals and biotechnology companies in order to equip talented scientists and clinicians living and working in the developing world.

• Social Venture Lab, which provides a program to share ideas on best practices for businesses or organizations that consider their community contribution as part of their product or service.

• CleanFish, which works with artisan fishing communities around the world to help bring their sustainably harvested fish to a global marketplace.

• The Environmental Insurance Agency, which creates pay-as-you-drive auto insurance, to reward low-mileage drivers.

• Eyebeam, a lively incubator of creativity and thought, where artists and technologists actively engage with culture, addressing the issues and concerns of our time.

• Partners for the Common Good, a wholesale loan participation network which serves the needs of low-income communities.

• Revolution Foods, a daily meal service in schools featuring meals that have no high fructose corn syrup or trans fats and contain only the highest-quality organic ingredients.

• Sweet Beginnings, helping ex-offenders fully reenter society by providing assistance in securing and retaining employment and developing a career path.

• Windows of Opportunity, a lead-safe window replacement business that protects children from lead poisoning and provides supportive employment training to youth ages 17-24 at risk of chronic unemployment.

• OneWorld Medical Devices addresses the large vaccine wastage problem that often results from improper temperature control.

• Mobile Medics, a traveling health care service that provides private sector, high quality, and affordable medical care through mobile clinics to paying villagers in India.

• Samasource aims to harness the world's untapped talent through socially responsible outsourcing.

• MyC4 raises capital for African entrepreneurs, and in so doing is striving to become a significant tool in the fight to end extreme poverty.

• MicroPlace makes socially responsible investments in microfinance to alleviate global poverty.

• RootSpace, promotes and celebrates entrepreneurship as a powerful force for economic, social, and environmental development around the world.

• Better World Books is a global bookstore that harnesses the power of capitalism to bring literacy and opportunity to people around the world.

• Benetech harnesses the power of technology for social benefit

• Living Cities brings opportunities and the power of mainstream markets to urban neighborhoods and residents historically left behind.

• Inveneo.org provides technology solutions to remote villages through non-governmental organizations and through commercial or government owned organizations.

• E+Co invests in local energy businesses in Africa, Asia and Latin America to support clean energy.

• AfriCeuticals strengthens Africa’s private health sector with certified human and veterinary products and services developed, sourced, manufactured, branded, and/or distributed in Africa.

• GeoOptics establishes a new model of community-based space development for the public good that could change the way the world collects and disseminates earth observational data.

Enterprise comes in all flavors, including social.

Two sides of the river

On the north side of the river, people stay up all night working to invent things. On the south side of the river, people wake up in the morning thinking how to change things. They are just as smart and interesting, and really good at what they do. They too push boundaries, break down needless conventions, and defy expectations.

On the south side, they don’t run a model railroad club that meets on Saturday nights, or have a cappella group called the loga-rhythms. But they do have subversive knitters whose software people use all around the world to protest sweatshop labor.

On the north side of the river, people closely watch the fate of commercial ventures like A123Systems, which manufactures high-power lithium ion batteries. They excel at private entrepreneurship, but try really hard to be socially responsible. Their commencement speaker last year was Muhammad Yunus, a pioneer in the microlending movement.

On the south side of the river, people closely watch the fate of social ventures like the Entrepreneurs for Peace, a training program for Arab-Israeli ventures. They excel at creating value for society as a whole, but are trying hard at private entrepreneurship. Their commencement speaker, two years ago, was Barack Obama.

On the north side of the river, they are trying to de-nerdify their reputation. Going to great lengths to do so, such as producing calendars featuring scantily clad students in the arts to show how well-rounded they are. On the south side of the river, they are trying to attract nerds, the really hardcore math/science types. And going to great lengths to do so, such as building a venture center.

Frankly, I don’t see the attempts to totally normalize either the north or south will get all that far. Nor should they. Well-rounded people don’t push the human race forward.