Over the past several months, I’ve been able to engage in a number of conversations with people from the private sector entrepreneurship communities in the Front Range. One of the most striking aspects of these conversations is the difference between how the private sector and academic communities innovate.
Innovation is a core part of both academic and private sector communities. In the academic world, innovation appears as technology or intellectual breakthroughs nested in well-established fields of knowledge. In the entrepreneurship communities, innovation seems to come from the recognition of opportunity and ability to capitalize on that opportunity. What is remarkable though is the process difference in academic and the entrepreneurial private sector innovation. In academics, we create systems that build capacity on top of a foundation of knowledge. Graduate students defend their proposed research usually against a backdrop of how it both builds from prior knowledge and advances that knowledge into the future. Successful research proposals usually mix incremental research with just the right whiff of transformational potential to excite (but not scare) a review panel. When the ground shifts in academics (as is does from time to time) it often seems more driven by the meeting of serendipity with a prepared mind (or minds) rather than the outcome of strategic risk taking.
The academic approach to innovation is strikingly different from the entrepreneurial community where risk and failure are routine and accepted. This isn’t to say that the entrepreneurial approaches are ideal in the expensive government funded science labs of universities or appropriate when depth of knowledge is a legitimate pre-requisite for work in most highly technical fields. Still, it seems to me that more strategic risk taking could make for a more innovative and flexible academy where small steps toward big ideas are more easily taken and failures accepted as the price of thinking outside the box. I for one would rather spend my time and use a little bit of money on a really great idea that could fail or change the world than dedicate time and a lot of money to an idea that even if successful won’t move the needle.
Innovation is a core part of both academic and private sector communities. In the academic world, innovation appears as technology or intellectual breakthroughs nested in well-established fields of knowledge. In the entrepreneurship communities, innovation seems to come from the recognition of opportunity and ability to capitalize on that opportunity. What is remarkable though is the process difference in academic and the entrepreneurial private sector innovation. In academics, we create systems that build capacity on top of a foundation of knowledge. Graduate students defend their proposed research usually against a backdrop of how it both builds from prior knowledge and advances that knowledge into the future. Successful research proposals usually mix incremental research with just the right whiff of transformational potential to excite (but not scare) a review panel. When the ground shifts in academics (as is does from time to time) it often seems more driven by the meeting of serendipity with a prepared mind (or minds) rather than the outcome of strategic risk taking.
The academic approach to innovation is strikingly different from the entrepreneurial community where risk and failure are routine and accepted. This isn’t to say that the entrepreneurial approaches are ideal in the expensive government funded science labs of universities or appropriate when depth of knowledge is a legitimate pre-requisite for work in most highly technical fields. Still, it seems to me that more strategic risk taking could make for a more innovative and flexible academy where small steps toward big ideas are more easily taken and failures accepted as the price of thinking outside the box. I for one would rather spend my time and use a little bit of money on a really great idea that could fail or change the world than dedicate time and a lot of money to an idea that even if successful won’t move the needle.