Multiphase entrepreneurship: An academic reflection

Abstract

Teaching, research, and service have traditionally been the common denominators of faculty professional responsibilities at academic institutions. In contrast, entrepreneurship has historically been considered separate from these responsibilities, often viewed as an aspirational goal above and beyond the standard expectations. This situation arises, in part, from the fact that most academic environments do not usually offer the conditions conducive for faculty to commercialize their ideas through entrepreneurship. Yet, integrating entrepreneurship with academic duties offers a unique opportunity to enhance the impact of one's work beyond the scholarly community, aligning well with the current public-facing and, the innovation-driven landscape of higher education. For faculty to succeed in academic entrepreneurship, balancing and harmonizing entrepreneurial goals with traditional responsibilities as members of the university is crucial. Furthermore, faculty need to understand the product market, the related tech-economic factors, the importance of industrial and academic partnerships, and the required financial and workforce support to achieve successful entrepreneurship outcomes. In this article, I illustrate that embracing entrepreneurship not only complements but also enriches traditional academic duties, offering a means to apply research in addressing real-world challenges. Speaking from personal experience, I recount how I set the goal early in my academic career to make entrepreneurship a significant part of my professional life, how this decision was informed by my research on multiphase reaction engineering, an area replete with examples of successful industrial processes, and how this guided my path forward in developing commercial processes of my own. I aim to elucidate the challenges of academic entrepreneurship through the lens of my entrepreneurial efforts. Through my journey spanning four decades, I highlight the rewards of academic entrepreneurship, including enhanced research applicability, increased funding opportunities, and the personal satisfaction of seeing one's work contribute to societal advancement. This journey, punctuated and highlighted with a multitude of opportunities, challenges, and experiences, has yielded several industrial processes, made possible by the support of strong, capable teams of creative and dedicated graduate students and post-doctoral research associates. I have also benefited considerably from the support of the Ohio State University (OSU) in matters such as patent filing, licensing, and startup spin-offs. The strength of the industrial partnerships I have played a part in forging has facilitated the potential realization of commercializing selected technologies—the ultimate goal of academic entrepreneurship. This article aims to demystify the challenges of academic entrepreneurship and inspire my academic colleagues to consider how they, too, can weave entrepreneurial endeavors into the tapestry of their professional careers. The journey of academic entrepreneurship is not only about achieving commercial success but also about synergistically enriching one's teaching and research goals with the dynamism of real-world problem-solving in ways that make a lasting impact on both academia and industry.