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Can we have an entrepreneurial university?  (View Comments)

Prof B Bhattacharyya

Posted On Friday, April 16, 2010 at 02:27:30 PM

One crying need for India is to develop entrepreneurship. We need entrepreneurs in millions. Most entrepreneurs are self-made but some believe that latent entrepreneurial talents can be harassed and flowered. Only a few IITs and equally small number of B-Schools and four Indian Institute of entrepreneurship have taken up this and that too, as marginal activities, except for the latter.

It is obvious that given the nature and the scale of need, this organisational infrastructure is quite inadequate.

There are two interrelated issue here. First, the Higher Education Institutes (HEI) which will specialise in this should themselves be run entrepreneurially. That is, the entire philosophy and operational methodology, including financing, will reflect an entrepreneurial attitude.

Second, an entrepreneurial university will also simultaneously focus on innovation. But it will do so within an entrepreneurial framework.

Traditionally, most universities have depended upon state patronage, which in subsequent years are also getting financial support from private endowments, including alumni. The latter is mostly a western phenomenon. An entrepreneurial university on the other hand mostly generates its own resources.

Triplex helix paradigm

While nobody will ever doubt the importance of innovation, we need to look at India's current needs in a wider context. What we need is a holy nexus of innovation, entrepreneurship and industry. In the context of the higher education establishment, the paradigm that is most relevant is what is known technically as triple helix: the interrelationship among government, academic and industry. In USA, the university system is increasingly taking the role of providing path-breaking innovation in S&T.

The triple helix denotes the university-industry-government relationship as one of relating equal, yet interdependent, institutional spaces which overlap and take the role of the other.

Following the experience in both USA and the UK, a university, based on a triple helix model, may help in knowledge-based regional economic development, as it promotes new economic activities from the innovations and scientific research. Silicon Valley is a recognised example but there are several others. At the level of university, MIT and Stanford are the two best examples.

This model is especially relevant in the present context because several of the proposed innovation universities are to be located at relatively underdeveloped areas. Regional development using the research output of the university through a cluster of industrial and commercial establishment assumes significance. While we are not proposing that all the innovation universities have to follow the pattern and methodology of triple helix paradigm, it will be in the best interest of the country if a few are modeled in such a way.

Prof B Bhattacharyya is Vice Chairman, IILM Institute for Higher Education

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