Keys to Building an Innovative and Entrepreneurial Campus Ecosystem: Practices to Policies

Abstract

More than 40 years after the Bayh-Dole Act empowered universities to capitalize on their research discovery and invention, significant opportunities remain in the vast potential for translating this intellectual property (IP) for the benefit of society. In the meantime, corporations have shrunk their basic research laboratories and sought further-developed, less-risky product ideas while the need for new problem-solving knowledge and innovation, from health and energy to technology and ecology, expands. Colleges and universities, regardless of their Carnegie classification, can seize this opportunity to leverage the expertise, creativity, and passion for making a difference in their faculty, students, and staff by developing entrepreneurial ecosystems of discovery, development, and commercialization. This article identifies experiences, opportunities, infrastructure, policies, and practices to stimulate such an ecosystem drawing on the author's experiences and observations at three diverse institutions over two decades. Those stimulants include increased creative and entrepreneurial activity; integration of curricular and co-curricular activities beginning with undergraduates; focus on entrepreneurship career options; more opportunities to advance IP; transdisciplinary collaboration; collaborative spaces; streamlined, supported translation and licensing processes; and impact on faculty and staff evaluation. This approach advances higher education's mission to serve students and society and opens the potential for new solutions that elevate well-being.