Africa Unchained
Matt Welsh writing in Volatile and Decentralized:
What I'd like to see is a university with a startup incubator attached to it, taking all of the best ideas and turning them into companies, with a large chunk of the money from successful companies feeding back into the university to fund the next round of great ideas. This could be a perpetual motion machine to drive research. Some universities have experimented with an incubator model, but I'm not aware of any cases where this resulted in a string of successful startups that funded the next round of research projects at that university.More here
Typically, when a startup spins off, the university gets a tiny slice of the pie, and the venture capitalists -- who fill the much-needed funding gap -- reap most of the benefits. But why not close the air gap between the research lab and the startup? Allow the faculty to stay involved in their offspring companies while keeping their research day job? Leverage the tremendous resources of a university to streamline the commercialization process -- e.g., use of space, equipment, IT infrastructure, etc.? Allow students to work at the startups for course credit or work-study without having to quit school? Maintain a regular staff of "serial entrepreneurs" who help get new startups off the ground? Connect the course curriculum to the fledgling startups, rather than teaching based on artificial problems? One might joke that some universities, like Stanford, effectively already operate in this way, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
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