Encouraging Enterprise for Ph.D. Students and Postdoctoral Fellows – Capitalizing on a Rich Source of Innovation

Abstract

Many initiatives have been created within universities in the U.K. and worldwide to stimulate enterprise within undergraduate courses, masters courses such as MBAs specializing in entrepreneurship, technology transfer courses and other M.Sc. courses aimed at enterprise in specific subject areas. Less prevalent, however, is enterprise training for those undertaking research degrees and research staff such as postdoctoral fellows. This is a particularly relevant area since those researchers remaining in academia may find themselves with an opportunity to commercialize research either via a spin-out venture or by licensing intellectual property to industry. There are many positive spin-offs from creating a set of researchers who are enterprising. Many U.K. grant awarding bodies are now rewarding those who have achieved commercial gain from basic or applied research and the U.K. government are actively trying to encourage spin-out companies to supplement university income from other sources, and elsewhere other initiatives are also encouraging of commercial activity. However, significant problems have arisen regarding the development of more enterprising universities.