Academic Entrepreneurship Konnect

What is new at the start of the twenty-first century? LocalKonnect has realised the rapid increase in the scope and intensity of academic entrepreneurial activities. This growth is spurred by the synergetic interaction of pull and push factors. The pull factors include the rise of the knowledge-based economy, technological advancement, and globalization, which generate demands for faculty expertise, thus creating new opportunities for scholars and scientists to engage in commercial activities. The push factors, such as waning public support for higher education, increasing research costs, institutional reward systems that tend to encourage faculty to generate external revenues, and state pressures on institutions to become more active actors in economic development, motivate faculty to engage in paid outside activities, thus augmenting the supply of academic entrepreneurship.

Academic entrepreneurship involves efforts to transform individual academic expertise and research results into intellectual property, marketable commodities, and economic development, thereby enhancing faculty remuneration and professional status.

The most common types of entrepreneurial activities undertaken by faculty members appear to be consulting, contractual research, large-scale science projects, and external teaching. Although types and levels of entrepreneurial activities vary by academic fields, faculty in the disciplines of engineering, computer science, medicine, agriculture, chemistry, and biotechnology are the most likely to be engaged in entrepreneurial activities, followed by social scientists, natural scientists, and humanists. Traditional activities such as consulting appear to be distributed evenly across the disciplines while activities such as the formation of private firms, including those involved in the patenting or commercialization of new products and processes, are dominated most often by the life sciences and engineering.

Advantages of Academic entrepreneurship

1. Individual faculty members, their institutional employers, clients, and the society at large share in the benefits of academic entrepreneurship.
2. The obvious benefit for the individual faculty member is supplemental income, which improves faculty economic status and sometimes contributes to additional research funding.
3. The outside activities often enhance the continuing education of faculty, help to ensure currency of teaching and research, and provide faculty with external affirmation of their expertise and greater peer recognition.
4. The primary benefit of academic entrepreneurship for clients is efficient access to sources of specialized expertise.
5. Involving faculty researchers in product commercialization also enables clients to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace by accelerating new product development and launching.
6. Another important benefit is the cross-fertilization of ideas between industry and institutions of higher education.
7. Synergies with respect to the training and development of staff may be significant as well.
8. Faculty entrepreneurial activities also benefit institutions. External funds secured by academic entrepreneurs may supplement funds available to institutions for conducting basic research and offering improved grants or assistantships to graduate students.
9. Permissive policies regarding academic entrepreneurship enable institutions to recruit professors who otherwise would be inclined to opt for employment in private industry or government. Additionally, successful faculty entrepreneurs improve institutional visibility and reputation.
10. Academic entrepreneurs take an active part in solving various social or community problems by providing their expertise to non-profit organizations and governmental agencies.
11. Furthermore, academic entrepreneurship, especially efforts that involve start-up companies, plays an increasingly important role in regional and national economic development.

So let’s join hands with the LocalKonnect and provide a strong impetus by linking your research areas, knowledge and skill to the needs of business in today’s world.

Send your profile to mail@localkonnect.com and we will connect you to LocalKonnect’s Team.