Entrepreneurial Innovation: PhD Research // Law and Entrepreneurship // Blog Network // University of Notre Dame

The changing landscape of higher education will require innovation in order to be responsive to calls for reformation. The future of faculty, methods of research, and how students attend classes continues to change. As these factors change, universities must respond.

Infusing the higher education model with entrepreneurial academic opportunity may breathe reformation into the model. Imagine a college where research done by students, and produces profits, directly reduces the cost of tuition or places a share of the profits into a trust for students that becomes accessible at the time of graduation. The opportunities are endless with innovation.

This article touches on PhD programs, discussing how the fusion of the two markets can be a new opportunity for start up incubation.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3065655/innovation-agents/can-entrepreneurship-revive-the-troubled-phd

Excerpt:

PhD students once dreamed of lifelong tenure, generous sabbaticals, and a closet full of jackets with elbow patches. Academic life, with its dusty-booked charm, ruled the day. No longer. Even in STEM fields, roughly 40% of PhDsare graduating without employment commitments. Could the solution be teaching postdocs to create their own jobs, as entrepreneurs?

One thought on “Entrepreneurial Innovation: PhD Research”

Anthony: Very interesting! I found this line particularly notable: “Runway tackles the problem on two fronts: one, by teaching scientists and engineers to think like entrepreneurs; and two, by taking a founder-friendly approach to the rules that govern intellectual property, which are often a barrier to executing university spinouts.” We discuss in class ways for the law to support entrepreneurs, and have noted that PhD students, whose education is paid for by the university, do not own their research—rather, the institution itself does.

I also find it fascinating that the boundaries of “entrepreneurship” are almost limitless. When one thinks of entrepreneurship, PhD programs typically do not come to mind. Yet, this article demonstrates that there is a place for innovation in such programs, even though it is typically thought of as a traditional, stagnant, and take-it-as-it-is field, where students are much at the mercy of the institutions they choose to serve through their research.

Christina on February 27, 2017 at 3:06 pm said:

Anthony: Very interesting! I found this line particularly notable: “Runway tackles the problem on two fronts: one, by teaching scientists and engineers to think like entrepreneurs; and two, by taking a founder-friendly approach to the rules that govern intellectual property, which are often a barrier to executing university spinouts.” We discuss in class ways for the law to support entrepreneurs, and have noted that PhD students, whose education is paid for by the university, do not own their research—rather, the institution itself does.

I also find it fascinating that the boundaries of “entrepreneurship” are almost limitless. When one thinks of entrepreneurship, PhD programs typically do not come to mind. Yet, this article demonstrates that there is a place for innovation in such programs, even though it is typically thought of as a traditional, stagnant, and take-it-as-it-is field, where students are much at the mercy of the institutions they choose to serve through their research.