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Working
Abroad -
Entrepreneurs and academia
Successful entrepreneurs who have risen from the grassroots know how to
take new ideas and inventions to fruition. MOHAN BABU writes why
it is so important for these entrepreneurs to partner with academia and
promote research activities
How many
times have you woken up thinking, “Wow, this is a million dollar idea,
let me start my own venture and capitalise on it”. Perhaps not many
times, may be the reason why most of us are content to remain faceless
employees working for large corporations. Even those working in research
labs, universities or R&D centres, rarely have “eureka” moments that
change the course of their lives or careers. More often than not,
research is incremental in nature; with researchers improvising on
existing theories and building on already laid groundwork. It is not to
say that sometimes, unexpected uses for new discoveries and inventions
do not lead to breakthroughs or ventures in a totally different
direction. However, such tangential changes are rare and too far
between. Some successful entrepreneurs want to change this mindset by
motivating researchers and those in academia to closely align themselves
with businesses that could benefit from their innovative technologies.
A few
successful entrepreneurs who have enjoyed the fruits of the “eureka”
moments may try to replicate them by inventing new technologies or
ideas. Few others, realising that lightning may or may not strike twice
sometimes decide to venture into seed funding. An example of this is
Gururaj Deshpande’s recent foray into funding research. Gururaj “Desh”
Deshpande, a leading American Indian entrepreneur, co-founded Sycamore
Networks and was successful in riding the dotcom technology wave of the
nineties, pandering to telecommunication companies trying to harness
optical networking technologies.
Realising
the impact that research in universities can have on our lives and
society, Deshpande and his wife Jaishree, have funded a
multimillion-dollar technological centre at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT). A gift of $20 million from Deshpande will make
possible the initial phase of the Deshpande Centre for Technological
Innovation (DCTI) at MIT. The idea for the centre arose from the
realisation that the limited research and development funds available to
young companies restricts their ability to collaborate with leading
universities, MIT said in its release.
In a
beaten down market, $ 20 million is bound to go a long way, especially
when it is utilised in a university setting where researchers are used
to being frugally funded. The new centre is being designed to support
ideas by MIT faculty members. In its first year, the centre plans to
award five seed-ignition grants of $50,000 and three research grants of
$250,000 that will support research on new technologies that have the
potential to fuel ground-breaking businesses or products. This is a
win-win kind of proposition since it will motivate university professors
to think outside the box and work towards solving commercial problems
using cutting-edge technologies.
Although
the story narrated so far is quintessentially American, the player,
Gururaj, is Indian by birth. Even the idea, entrepreneurs and
industrialists funding research is not something solely American. In
India, industrialists like Tatas and Birlas have a long history of
funding educational institutions and research organisations that fuel
innovation. Microsoft and Cisco have jumped onto the bandwagon and are
also active in funding labs and research centres in India, especially in
collaboration with premier technical academies like IITs. Can
entrepreneurs do more? You bet they can! Indian entrepreneurs who
understand our local market need to take it upon themselves to mentor
the next generation of entrepreneurs and researchers.
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