Towards 'borderless', Entrepreneurial Universities

Professor Ranjith SENARATNE, Vice-Chancellor University of Ruhuna

EDUCATION: If we look at some highly prestigious as well as rapidly developing universities in the world, they are breaking away from tradition and bringing new perspectives and vision to universities by installing those with experience in industry and the world of work as the Vice-Chancellors.

For instance, Harvard University of USA, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, appointed Larry Summers, former US Secretary of the Treasury as the President.

Some years ago, Cambridge University recruited Alec Broers, an Australian research engineer from IBM New York, as its first Vice-Chancellor from outside Britain while the Oxford University appointed John Hood, a Consulting Engineer and former Vice-Chancellor of Auckland University from New Zealand as the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford in 2004. Such decisions were simply unthinkable in the past in the two most prestigious universities in Britain with strong traditions and values peculiar to them. Thus Oxford and Cambridge are fishing and competing in the global market place for talent and ideas. They have made the watershed decision to search globally for their academic leaders.

Prof. Shih Choon Fong, the President of the NUS has worked at General Electrical Company USA, for seven years before joining it.

He has now made the NUS a topnotch university, coming within the top 5 in Asia and Australia. In Japan increasing number of universities now have high level administrators who have been recruited from industrial research positions.

There are many such examples in the higher education landscape of the world, which show how they have responded to change and the importance of having a leader with an entrepreneurial drive and experience so as to create an entrepreneurial university.

In Brazil, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, government has offered incentives for companies and universities to collaborate in revising rigid academic structures to make undergraduate education both more interdisciplinary and more responsive to the needs of the employers.

If we look at some entrepreneurial universities in Europe, we can learn many lessons and get new ideas. For instance, Chalmers University of Technology (CUT) in Sweden, one of the 10 best technical universities in Europe, has a Vice-Rector for external activities/university-industry-government cooperation.

It has a Department of Innovation Engineering and Management. Between 1978 and 1998, it has produced 225 spin-offs. The Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship (CSE) at CUT recruits students from Engineering, Business and Design School.

Thus it is not confined only to Management students as in our country. Every year 20-25 students are selected on the basis of comprehensive applications and interviews by the staff of CSE and psychologists.

The aim of the selection process is to identify students who are motivated and capable of becoming entrepreneurs. Here studies are built around a real innovation project where groups of three students are establishing a new venture on the basis of a research-based idea.

Thus the students are fully involved as entrepreneurs in the start-up process, from high potential idea selection, team composition, to venture formation and the process of attracting investors.

Entrepreneurial Universities

In our universities, entrepreneurship is still a subject only for undergraduates reading for degrees in Management and Business Administration. Science-based faculties such as Engineering, Medicine, Science, Fisheries, Agriculture etc. generate considerable amount of new knowledge through research that is of great industrial potential and commercial value.

However, they are only published in research journals and the findings are hardly commercialized and it is often the foreign countries that benefit from such valuable findings.

For instance, I was recently chairing an interview board to promote a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry who has clearly established the strong cobra-repellent properties of a plant called "Andu" (Eryngtum foetidum). The results have been published in a reputed journal, but no attempt has been made to commercialize the finding.

This could potentially be developed into a big international industry, but for lack of entrepreneurial skills and drive thousands of such valuable findings in many disciplines that could have given birth to new enterprises promoting industrial growth and economic development in the country, are gathering dust on the shelves of libraries.

Entrepreneurship in my opinion is a cross-cutting discipline and should be taught as a subject in all degree programmes including Engineering, Agriculture, Fisheries, Science, IT etc.

In our universities, Entrepreneurship is taught only to students following degree programmes in Management and Business Administration and there is no mix of students from different disciplines.

As a result, they do not see the tremendous entrepreneurial opportunities that exist in various sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, IT, chemistry, industry etc. Multidisciplinary will bring new and diverse perspectives and provides for cross-fertilization of ideas instead of inbreeding.

Therefore many developed universities in the world promote the concept of borderless, multidisciplinary university, enabling free diffusion of ideas and confluence of talents across disciplinary boundaries.

Hence, we need to properly identify students from different disciplines who have strong entrepreneurial passion and drive for courses on entrepreneurship and as done in some foreign universities, i.e. Bodo Business School in Norway, it should be made mandatory for each student in entrepreneurship to start an enterprise in the first year itself under the guidance of experienced entrepreneurs and mentors.

Students in technologically biased fields could be offered courses on Technopreneurship. The staff of such courses should also have the ability and passion to unleash the creative energies of students and get them to think out-of-the box.

It is also important to invite the movers and shakers of industry to develop and conduct courses, developing the entrepreneurial skills and igniting the entrepreneurial passion of students thereby helping them to blossom out as entrepreneurs.

Establishment of business incubators attached to universities are now very common in many foreign universities where students are immersed in an entrepreneurial environment which enable them to develop into enterprising, resourceful, independent self-starters and eventually blossom out as successful entrepreneurs.

The University of Ruhuna recently established such incubators with the assistance from UNIDO to help the start-ups.

New knowledge and findings of industrial potential or commercial value that emanate from research conducted by the staff are often not commercialized and such a culture does not exist in the universities.

Therefore it will be useful to have an institutional mechanism or structure to provide necessary services to educate and advise the staff on how to commercialize research findings, innovation and inventions and new knowledge and assist transform new ideas and knowledge into innovative products and services.

Moreover, courses on creativity, innovation, invention and such like, which will sharpen the faculties of analysis, foster imagination, inquiry, and creative and out-of-the box thinking and ignite the passion to innovate and create new knowledge should be developed and offered.

In addition, the following measures will prove useful in affording an entrepreneurial dimension to and promoting an entrepreneurial culture in universities.

1. Establishment of partnership with industry and Chambers of Commerce

2. Establishment of a Chair in Entrepreneurship enabling the universities to obtain services of suitable private sector personnel to conduct relevant teaching and training programmes

3. Providing internship to students with industry as part of the academic programme

4. Establishment of partnership with leading entrepreneurial universities in the world.

5. Setting up of Entrepreneurs and Innovators Clubs

6. Establishment of encouragement award schemes to honour and recognize the most outstanding student/staff innovator, inventor and entrepreneur in universities

7. Engagement of students in entrepreneurial activities such as running guest houses, student canteens, bookshops, souvenir shops, day-care centres/early childhood development centres, cyber cafes including web designing, travel offices, tourist information centres with connected services in town as enterprises.

Advantages

An Entrepreneurial University will have several advantages over a traditional university. Reduced dependence on State funds through income generated from licences, patents, spin-off companies etc, greater administrative and financial autonomy through generated income, production of more innovative and entrepreneurial graduates, improved employability of graduates and greater contribution to industrial growth, business development and regional development are some major advantages of an Entrepreneurial University.

If we look at the universities in the world, there are many universities that have become not only a true and effective partner, but also the driving force and engine of regional development. Stanford University of USA, Technology Universities in Aachen in Germany, University of Sheffield in UK, Oulu University in Finland, Chalmers University in Sweden, Punjab University in India are just to name a few.

There are many youths in rural areas with innovative and entrepreneurial ideas and spirit, but there have no way of developing these ideas into novel products and services.

Besides, many technically gifted people in rural areas running small cycle repair shops, garages and such like are just stagnating without blossoming out expressing their full potential. This is because institutions that can give a leg-up to such promising people do not reach out to them.

According to the former Director of Innovation and Invention Commission, Dr. L. M. K. Tillekeratne, most of the innovation and inventions in Sri Lanka have come about from rural areas. Invention of the cashew shelling machine by a rural youth is a case in point.

The universities, through Innovators and Entrepreneurs Clubs could reach out and unearth such 'gems and jewels' and help them blossom out through appropriate interventions.

The out-reach arm of the universities with the engagement of right students could do a greater deal in improving viability and growth of such micro and small enterprises and graduating them to medium enterprises.

The University of Ruhuna is in the process of repositioning and re-creating itself with an entrepreneurial dimension. It looks forward to becoming a true and effective partner in facilitating, accelerating and directing enterprise development in the region with its strategic partnership with the Southern Development Authority, the Chambers of Commerce in Hambantota and Matara and other relevant government and non-governmental organisations.