ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A WAY FORWARD IN EMERGING COUNTRY

The present growth of innovation in India is in its infancy compared to its foreign compatriots, but with tremendous growth prospects owing to its geopolitical clout and demographic positioning. India with a 1.3 billion population and a 500 million middle class base requires a flourishing manufacturing base, service sector, agricultural self-sufficiency, defense indignation and sufficiency as well as a globally competing knowledge base comprising of primary, secondary and higher education (See Figure 5).

Figure 5. Patent details

The HEIs and academic entrepreneurship drive function as catalysts in facilitating multiplier effect on self-employment opportunities and inculcating ‘entrepreneurship spirit’ among the young generation. The other objectives are promotion of micro enterprises at rural level by providing vital information and support in organizing research and documentation activities, creation and advancement of new knowledge and insights in entrepreneurship theory building and practice research, developing corporate excellence, sentising and improving the support system for facilitating management of existing enterprises by accelerating the process of entrepreneurship development and spread its impact across all strata of the society. HEIs also provide incubation facilities in the form of physical space, funding support, legal and financial mentorship.

HEIs and stand-alone incubation bodies support start-up entrepreneurs with incubation, training, and mentoring facilities. The limitations of these HEIs or stand-alone bodies are that they do not follow any particular and separate mandate. This leads to some sort of overlapping facilities or functions for the start-ups with overlapping activities. So, there is a requirement for specific and separate mandates for both HEIs and stand-alone incubation institutions. For example, selection of appropriate technology is one of the major tools to drive the success of entrepreneurial activities. The selected technology for incubation support must be able to serve directly to public need. Technology institutions within HEIs can provide, accelerate and promote technological aspects of a start-up whereas a society under stand-alone organization may provide social angle to it. This would provide a better, rich and long term support for the start-ups.

Distinct and specific mandates for the entrepreneurship supporting systems as discussed above would better facilitate a networking system for nurturing entrepreneurial activities and their development. This can be further developed into a network of community development organizations across the country. These organization networking can engage in several kinds of community development, from revitalizing entrepreneurs, to providing incubation, to sustaining and creating vibrant entrepreneurial societies, and ensuring opportunities for all entrepreneurs in the state and country, facilitating corporate entrepreneurship. As a network, these organizations may join together to strengthen the countries entrepreneurial approach through development of industries making it more strong and dynamic, through resource sharing efficiently, and advocating for sound programs and policies. These communities developed through networking would facilitate the entrepreneurs possess a vibrant force, and can adapt to the rapid changes of the society and also build on the knowledge they accumulate.

Through networking among the different organizations, academic entrepreneurship can facilitate a better entrepreneurial activity, but a complete system with different initiatives and policies would provide an improved internal management system for aligning the goal of individual entrepreneur within the academic arena, incubation system, and government incubation objective. The specific research has identified diversified goals within the academic entrepreneurship drive in HEIs. The individual researchers in academic institutions have no or minimum clue about industry requirements, the institutional system does not surely know about the convergent point of economic requirement and institutional goal, the government on the other hand is formulating the policies on macro-economic parameters without having clear idea of scientific resources in hand.

The start-up companies should be mentored by the experts of various incubation centers to differentiate their innovation from the market. The pool of mentors should be from, industry, academia and technology experts. This would help them to differentiate their products from the existing products/technologies available in market. This can only happen with proper databases in hand. This creates a knowledge resource base for the start-ups that helps them to connect and become successful. Universities should try to analyze the data received through their entrepreneurial engagement for developing university policies, strategies and initiatives related to entrepreneurship. Evaluation of entrepreneurship should help the universities in fulfilling these internal needs and provide strategic information for short, medium and long-term planning, target setting, and decision-making for their next step.

Data creates opportunities for entrepreneurs to work more efficiently, effectively and also facilitates their active participation in network creation and development. Accessing data related to the different aspects of their activities becomes difficult for the start-up entrepreneurs. Therefore, creating a database for facilitating different entrepreneurial activities of the start-ups should be one of the major objectives of the incubation centers. The data repository can be treated as “knowledge platform”, facilitating a higher degree of flexibility in the entrepreneurial activity structure enabling alteration and combination of views to provide a dynamic and interactive platform for different context setup.

Finally, the academic entrepreneurship should recognize ‘failure’ in business as learning option. The incubation centers within academic arena should invest on “entrepreneur’’ and not evaluate the projects in isolation. The resource building through actual businesses and less on business plans would create an environment of positive vive towards entrepreneurship in emerging country like India.

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