Higher Ed focuses on innovation: insights from the 3rd Annual Deshpande Symposium

Earlier this month, I attended 3rd Annual Deshpande Symposium for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Higher Education in Lowell, Massachusetts. The symposium brought together some 250 people, mostly affiliated with universities through technology transfer offices and entrepreneurial centers.

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Deshpande Symposium participants visit NERVE @ UMass Lowell (Credit: Andrew Maas)[/caption]

As part of my responsibilities to seek out new Breakout Labs applicants, I engage with a lot of university programs that focus on innovation. Many of the companies we support trace their tap roots to large basic research investments that have been made at the institutional level.

As federal funds have stagnated for scientific research, universities are seeking new revenue streams and see launching successful companies as a logical and necessary sequel to securing inventions. Particularly for scientific innovation, the tacit knowledge that never makes it into the formal intellectual property is often key to success. Hence, there is an increased focus on entrepreneurial activities within universities.

At the same time, universities must maintain a focus on formal education for all their students. So, I learned for the first time about the distinction between creating “fat bottoms” and “long tails” — the former being an education in entrepreneurship that will serve many students in future pursuits but will likely not bear immediate fruit; the latter being a means to accelerate the most promising technologies into commercial ventures.

I’ve heard echoes of this distinction from other innovation initiatives. My colleagues and I have participated as judges in educational programs that artificially bring together teams of students who create a company plan. And at an NSF I-Corps Demo Day last summer at Berkeley, the leadership made it clear that a “no-go” decision was as valuable as a “go” decision to form a company at the end of the program because either way, the program was educating future entrepreneurs.

Educating future entrepreneurs is important, particularly in science and technology where professorship is now the “alternative” career path. At the end of the day, the only way to really become an entrepreneur is to go out there and do it, based on a passion and not an academic exercise. But, formal education, entrepreneurial exercises, and networking opportunities that universities provide add value.

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The best applicants we have seen may not come directly from entrepreneurial training programs, but they typically do come from places where these kinds of efforts are part of an ecosystem that values and supports the move from out of the lab and into the economy.