Technology Transfer and Beyond, Way Beyond

Universities have long been cited as an important source of innovation and, more recently, a key cog in the American entrepreneurial ecosystem. Much of the attention has focused on intellectual property that a university licenses, including to start-up companies that take technology out of the university and into the marketplace. (Hence the moniker, technology transfer.)

This, however, is only one mechanism by which university innovations have an economic impact--in fact, it may not even be the most important avenue of advancing innovations. This is one of the conclusions to be drawn from a new Kauffman Foundation study officially released this week by Edward Roberts and Charles Eesley of the Sloan School and MIT Entrepreneurship Center.

A conservative estimate is that, "if the active companies founded by MIT graduates formed an independent nation, their revenues would make that nation at least the seventeenth-largest economy in the world. A less-conservative direct extrapolation of the underlying survey data boosts the numbers to 25,800 currently active companies founded by MIT alumni that employ about 3.3 million people and generate annual world sales of $2 trillion, producing the equivalent of the eleventh-largest economy in the world."

These are astounding numbers and highlight the absolute centrality of universities to entrepreneurial capitalism. This in itself is probably not a new revelation for many readers, but this study brings to the fore the much wider impact that is often hidden beneath numbers that focus solely on licenses and patents. Innovation and entrepreneurship are much broader than that.

Why is MIT so successful at producing high-impact entrepreneurs? Culture, according to the authors:

"Rather than any single or narrow set of influences, the overall MIT entrepreneurial ecosystem, consisting of multiple education, research, and social network institutions and phenomena, contributes to this outstanding and growing entrepreneurial output. This ecosystem rests upon a long MIT history since its 1861 founding and its evolved culture of 'Mens et Manus,' or ' mind and hand' . . . [a] tradition of valuing useful work."

It has become fashionable to speak of national and regional economies as ecosystems, a salutary development that (hopefully) underscores the subtle and fragile connections among institutions that as a whole drive economic development.

But what this report makes clear is that such an entrepreneurial culture is usually not something that can simply be decreed de novo. What is interesting is that the universities that top the innovation tables today--MIT, Stanford, Wisconsin, Berkeley--all date to a period during which utility was a guiding principle of higher education. Laurence Veysey's fabulous book, The Emergence of the American University, is a great history of this period. The entrepreneurial cultures from which we benefit today have been developing for a very long time, something to remember as we search for ways to generate new innovation ecosystems today.

Comments

[Diploma High School]

Worth sharing this information. Good Work

[life experience graduate certificate]

history since its 1861 founding and its evolved culture of 'Mens et Manus,' or ' mind and hand' . . . [a] tradition of valuing useful work."