NEWS ARTICLES RELATED TO INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN
U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION
Source: Geekwire - http://www.geekwire.com/2015/welcome-tampa-startup-scene-emerges-beach-paradise/
WELCOME TO TAMPA: A STARTUP SCENE EMERGES IN THIS BEACH PARADISE
BY JOHN COOK on January 21, 2015 at 5:00 am
The Tampa Bay region is not all about sunshine and sand.
This historic Florida port, birthplace of Hooters and Wikipedia, has startup fever in a big way.
Comprised of the waterfront cities of St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Tampa, this sun-soaked region of 4 million
residents is making a serious play to create one of the country’s most desirable entrepreneurial hubs.
What isn’t there to love?
Relatively cheap housing, an emerging research university and an ambitious downtown development backed in
part by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. And then there are the beaches — miles and miles of pristine beaches.
(Weather forecast today: 77 degrees and sunny).
Living in vacation land
“In some ways, Tampa is an amazing secret,” said KiteDesk co-founder and CEO Sean Burke, a tech
entrepreneur who moved to Tampa from Chicago in 2005. “I look around and say: I live where a lot of people
vacation.”
Tampa is working hard to move beyond the perception of a Pina Colada-sippin’ beach town, with a number of
government-led and grassroots entrepreneurial efforts helping to lead the charge.
It’s still early in the process.
“I would say emerging — we are getting there,” said Daniel James Scott, an entrepreneur and the newlyappointed executive director of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum.
Tampa has yet to establish itself as a technology hub on the order of Austin, Boston or Seattle. And venture
financing — like many places — remains a problem.
According to PitchBook, just $113 million
was invested across 11 deals in Tampa and St. Petersburg in 2014 — which compares to more than $1.2 billion
in the Seattle metro area for the same period.
But Scott, who moved to Florida from Cleveland, Ohio, after attending Florida State University, said a “thriving
ecosystem” is emerging.
“We do have a ton of tech firms here,” said Scott. “We are not Silicon Valley from the standpoint of having the
financing of these companies, but we’ve certainly had a ton of really great companies pop up out of here.”
Clearwater, Florida-based Tech Data Corp. was founded in 1974 — a year before Microsoft — and now is one
of the largest distributors of technology products with annual sales last year of $26.8 billion. One of Fortune’s
“Most Admired” companies, Tech Data ranks 111th on the Fortune 500, boasting a market value of $2.19
billion.
There’s also hope that the U.S. Central Command or CENTCOM, established in 1983 and located at nearby
MacDill Air Force Base, could spark a wave of defense and cybersecurity startups.
More recently, Tampa Bay area startups such as WuFoo and EventJoy — both of which relocated to the Valley
after participating in the Y Combinator incubator program — were sold for nice sums to SurveyMonkey and
Ticketmaster, respectively.
In search of money and a tech giant
Home-grown successes such as those will need to stick around — and continue to prosper — if Tampa wants to
elevate itself to an upper echelon of tech hubs.
Burke, who co-founded KiteDesk in 2011, wants to hang in his adopted home town. But he, too, feels the pull
of money centers such as Boston, New York and Silicon Valley, and he said the company would consider
relocating if the right financial backers came along and requested a move. “We would go anywhere to make the
company a success,” said Burke, adding that it can be a struggle for entrepreneurs to raise capital and attract
talent in Tampa.
Asked what Tampa’s technology community needs most, Burke paused for a second — skipping the most
frequently cited issues of venture capital and developers — before noting that there’s no direct flight between
Tampa and the San Francisco Bay Area.
“If we are going to get investors from the West Coast, they are not going to spend eight hours in transit,” he
said. There are signs of progress on this front as well, with the Tampa International Airport embarking on the
biggest expansion in its history last fall, a massive $1 billion overhaul that officials say will help put the city on
the world stage. (For what it’s worth, there is a direct flight between Seattle and Tampa).
A great airport will have to service a growing economy, one where entrepreneurs are encouraged to fly high.
And, as Burke sees it, one of the rubs on Tampa is that startups don’t always go for the “big swing.” Instead,
they build a successful $5 million to $20 million company, and then sell out. “There has not been a Facebook or
Twitter or LinkedIn,” said Burke. “Having a household name in tech would put us a bit more on the map.”
Even so, Burke is one of many who see big things happening in Tampa. The startup community — though
sometimes overly fragmented in his view — is rallying.
“We have come a long way … and we are gaining momentum,” says Rebecca White, who leads the
entrepreneurship center at the University of Tampa, which is undergoing an expansion of its own with plans for
a new facility to be announced later this year. It now has 250 people enrolled in graduate and undergraduate
entrepreneurship courses, up from about 80 students five years ago.
Linda Olson, president of Tampa Bay WaVe, a technology incubator that’s hatched over 100 startups in the past
five years, agrees that things are on the move. Some wealthy Tampa Bay residents, many of whom got burned
in real estate during the past economic recession, are “slowly starting to crack open the wallets,” she says.
Political leadership sets a new stage
It also helps that Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn, who assumed office in 2011, is proactively leading an economic
development charge that largely has the support of the startup and business communities. Multiple people
interviewed for this story cited Buckhorn’s enthusiasm and energy in transforming the city.
Meanwhile, the historic divide between Tampa and St. Petersburg is dissolving with the political leadership of
both cities seeing themselves as a more unified region, rather than disparate parts.
“We have to see ourselves as the Tampa Bay area, and we have to really work together across the bay,” said
White of the University of Tampa. “I think that is happening with the two mayors that we have right now. That
is really improving.”
One of the biggest aspects of Buckhorn’s redevelopment push is a project calledChannelside, a once-blighted
area just east of downtown. Led by Tampa Bay Lightning owner and former hedge fund operator Jeff Vinik, the
$1 billion office, residential and entertainment project made headlines last September when word spread that
Bill Gates’ investment company was helping to fund the effort.
“This will put an exclamation point on the story we’ve been telling,” Mayor Buckhorn told The Tampa Bay
Times after Gates’ involvement was disclosed.
Tampa Bay WaVe’s Olson calls the downtown development “transformative.”
“I really don’t know any other word for it,” said the native of St. Petersburg.
The more than 30-acre project includes retail, park space and housing, but perhaps most importantly from a
business standpoint will be the relocation of the University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine and
the Heart Health Institute to a tract of land being donated by Vinik. That will put the facilities in close proximity
to the university’s world-renowned Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation.
In that regard, the project is similar to what Paul Allen’s Vulcan achieved in Seattle’s South Lake Union
neighborhood, now home to Amazon.com, University of Washington medicine and biotechnology labs and a
number of startups.
As a city, Tampa has always shown strength in health sciences, medical devices and biotechnology, buoyed in
part by the 4,500-employee strong Moffit Cancer Center. The Channelside area, which is still seeking an
official name of the neighborhood, could provide a central hub to consolidate some of these efforts.
I think Tampa is so unique because we are discovering our identity.”
And that leads to a central theme I picked up in my interviews with Tampa Bay residents. There’s a feeling that
things are percolating, and people are largely excited to be a part of the change.
“I think Tampa is so unique because we are discovering our identity,” said Ryan Sullivan, a regular Startup
Weekend organizer who is planning the Startup Week events in Tampa early next month. “We have a lot of
cool things happening, and ultimately our community is coming together to pull these things off, and bring our
startups to success… We are still discovering ourselves, and that is the opportunity for us.”
Fun in the sun at Tampa’s GeekEnd
For outsiders, especially those like me from sun-starved regions like Seattle, you can’t help but continue to
think about Tampa as a place of sun and sand.
And there’s one place where Tampa’s emerging startup community embraces the beach lifestyle — in full
force.
We live in paradise and this our day to close the laptops and remember that.”
It’s called “GeekEnd” — and it happens the last weekend of the month. The festivities start with a calorie-heavy
breakfast on Thursday morning atJimbo’s Pit BBQ on West Kennedy Boulevard where techies feast on a
popular menu item known as the Geek Omelette — complete with pulled pork, sautéed onion, and BBQ
sauce. On Friday, folks congregate at the Tampa Bay WaVe tech accelerator for an open pitch event, with
entrepreneurs sharing ideas over pizza and beer with the larger community.
That’s all a build-up to the capstone event on Saturday, known as the Armadillo Buffet or geek beach day.
Organizers Mitch Neff and Justin Davis set up awnings and tents at Madeira Beach around 10 a.m., and the
crowd filters in and out all day.
Paddle boards and coolers are rolled out, with families grilling burgers and sipping on microbrews from Cigar
City.
“We live in paradise and this our day to close the laptops and remember that,” said Neff, a digital strategist who
also runsStartupBus events. “Conversations tend toward the fun-side of geeky. It’s here that you can tell the
difference between ‘work’ and true passion. People get excited. They have fun. Most importantly, we celebrate
having 10 months of beach weather.”
Did you hear that folks? 10 months of beach weather.
OK, Tampa, you may have hooked us.
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education - http://chronicle.com/article/Administrators-Call-for/146245/
April 28, 2014
ADMINISTRATORS CALL FOR REWARDING PROFESSORS’ PATENTS WITH TENURE
By Benjamin Mueller
A hundred and thirty-four years after Thomas Edison designed the first commercially practical light bulb, the
famed inventor’s tenure prospects were up for debate at a conference of the National Academy of Inventors last
year. "Would Thomas Edison Receive Tenure?" a group of panelists asked.
Unsurprisingly, the panelists voiced unanimous support. A vice president for research at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham even prepared a signed diploma for the inventor.
Even so, the panelists expressed concern that under many universities’ current tenure and promotion guidelines,
a faculty member with Edison’s record of commercial success might not be rewarded for his contributions.
Under a tenure system that places a higher value on publications than on entrepreneurship, an innovative
professor might face a choice between pursuing commercially viable research ideas and focusing on publishing
papers.
Now, in a paper based on last year’s panel, a group of administrators is calling on universities to reward faculty
members’ patents and social impact. In "Changing the Academic Culture: Valuing Patents and
Commercialization Toward Tenure and Career Advancement," published on Monday in Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, the authors argue that universities are missing a crucial opportunity to translate
research into real products by relying on outdated tenure guidelines.
Under the current system, said the paper’s lead author, Paul R. Sanberg, a senior vice president for research and
innovation at the University of South Florida, professors are forced to pursue patents and product-based
research on the side of their academic work. While senior professors have the freedom to seek licensing
opportunities and start their own companies, he said, younger professors are forced to put a lid on some of their
most creative projects.
Mr. Sanberg recalled the case of an assistant professor coming up for tenure who told his university that he had
to pull back on his work with a start-up company because his department did not recognize those activities.
"He had to fall back and wait until he was in a more secure position," Mr. Sanberg said.
In other cases, he said, inventors decide to forgo academic careers, or get pushed from universities into the
private sphere.
"Young people who want to start companies will see the system, and they’ll go, ‘Well, I can’t have the freedom
to do the things I really want to do, which is to translate research and benefit society,’" he said.
The paper, whose authors include administrators at the California Institute of Technology and the University of
Minnesota system, cites a 2012 survey that found that only 25 of the top 200 national research universities
consider patents and commercial activities in tenure and promotion decisions. The authors write that pressure on
universities to support that work has grown with the dismantling of many large corporate research laboratories.
Universities, they write, have been slow to develop the partnerships to fill that gap.
Gains for Universities
Mr. Sanberg said universities stand to gain from emphasizing faculty members’ commercial work. Many
universities share royalty and licensing income with professors who develop a product, he said. Encouraging
business activity can also push professors thwarted by a shortage of federal research dollars to pursue a growing
pot of business-oriented grants, like those from the federally run Small Business Innovation Research program.
The National Academy of Inventors, which hosted last year’s panel, was founded in 2010 to encourage
academic innovation. Mr. Sanberg is the group’s president.
Universities that have changed their promotion guidelines have an easier time attracting innovative faculty
members, Mr. Sanberg said.
The University of South Florida is one of 39 institutions that the paper notes have incorporated entrepreneurial
activities into tenure considerations.
The University of Arizona, for example, recognizes "integrative and applied forms of scholarship that involve
cross-cutting collaborations with business and community partners, including translational research,
commercialization activities, and patents."
Mr. Sanberg said fears that a focus on commercialization would restrict free access to research knowledge were
unfounded. He said patents were designed to reward innovation with some freedom from competition. Like
published papers, he said, patents raise the bar of innovation for other people in a field.
And despite the perception that only faculty members in more-lucrative engineering fields support rewards for
commercial activity, the paper’s authors argue that support for changes in tenure and promotion guidelines is
widespread. The paper cites a 2013 survey of more than 500 faculty members that found that only 20 percent
disagreed with rewarding faculty members for patentable inventions. Only 11 percent of history professors
disagreed with the recommendation.
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education - http://chronicle.com/article/To-Develop-Student/131838/
May 13, 2012
TO DEVELOP STUDENT ENTREPRENEURS, COLLEGES INCUBATE THEIR IDEAS
By Beckie Supiano
John Herb came up with a business idea while he was still in high school. So when it was time to choose a
college, he looked for one that would help him develop that idea: scanning people's old photos and creating a
private social network around them. Syracuse University stood out for theSyracuse Student Sandbox, a business
incubator, and other resources it offers to would-be entrepreneurs. Mr. Herb just finished his freshman year
there, and he was accepted into the incubator for this fall.
Mr. Herb is far from alone. Entrepreneurship has captured the imagination of many students: One observer calls
it the "Zuckerberg effect." Starting something seems not only sexy but possible, with the Internet's having
lowered the barriers a would-be entrepreneur must scale to get an idea off the ground. As students aspire to start
the next Instagram, or simply be their own bosses, colleges are responding with more resources than ever to
support them.
Beyond student demand for entrepreneurship training, worries about the weak job market are driving colleges'
response. Teaching students to start their own businesses is one way to give them a leg up after graduation. And
some institutions see a responsibility to foster job creation more broadly, especially in their own backyards. To
that end, they are increasingly offering majors and minors, incubators and accelerators, business-plan
competitions and internships—anything from a single academic course or co-curricular program to an array of
opportunities—for interested students.
Colleges are well placed to help students become entrepreneurs, says Donna Fenn, author of Upstarts: How
GenY Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit From Their
Success(McGraw-Hill, 2009). In addition to established programs, they provide students with access to
professors' expertise and advice, as well as the eager, cheap labor of classmates.
"Higher education now is a more ripe environment for entrepreneurship than it's ever been," Ms. Fenn says.
Competition can also push colleges to offer the hot new thing: If peer institutions are into entrepreneurship,
nobody wants to lag behind. And there's additional pressure in this case, says Ms. Fenn. If colleges don't help
students start ventures, they might bail out of higher education altogether. The PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel
hasencouraged doing just that, giving fledgling entrepreneurs money to drop out and realize their ideas. Some
colleges want to show that students can develop their businesses, maybe even better, on the campus.
Beyond Business School
Babson College has focused on entrepreneurship since before Mark Zuckerberg was born. Back in the late
1970s, it was looking for a way to stand out from other business schools, says Leonard A. Schlesinger, the
college's current president.
So Babson introduced entrepreneurship as an academic discipline and began honoring "distinguished
entrepreneurs," hall-of-fame style. It was a "gutsy move," he says, made before entrepreneurship was cool.
Since then Babson's approach has evolved—it abandoned a business-plan competition, for instance, to focus
more on the quality of ideas.
Mr. Schlesinger has watched entrepreneurship spread across higher education in recent years, and not only
within business schools. One reason is the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which has given large grants to
a handful of colleges to help them make entrepreneurship interdisciplinary.
Today colleges offer business-development classes in a variety of departments. Career centers have gotten
involved. Campus incubators stand ready to serve any student. One goal, of course, is creating ventures; another
is creating jobs. Colleges face heightened pressure to prepare graduates for an uncertain world of work.
Whether they go into business for themselves, a start-up, or a traditional company, entrepreneurial skills,
colleges figure, can help them thrive.
At the University of Texas at Austin, staff in the liberal-arts career-services office are teaching a new course in
which students develop a business. The course, one of several entrepreneurship programs at the university, grew
out of an observation from a dean, says Katharine Brooks, director of the center and co-instructor of the course.
Every college's career center is doing all it can to prepare students for a limited number of jobs, the dean said.
Why not have the center help create jobs?
The University of Miami asked the same question. When William Green started as dean of undergraduate
education there five years ago, he met with faculty from all nine undergraduate schools and colleges about new
directions for the career center. Faculty members from across the campus told him the same story: Students
would come to them before graduation and say they wanted to start something, and the professors wouldn't
know what to tell them. Before long, Miami set out to create a space for entrepreneurship, designing the Launch
Pad.
The university wants to make sure that any student, in any field, sees entrepreneurship as a viable career path,
says Susan W. Amat, who co-founded the project with Mr. Green. At the same time, it wants to ensure that if
students and alumni start ventures, they do so in South Florida.
The Launch Pad, which started in 2008, offers free mentorship to any student who wants to start a business. So
far it has led to 80 ventures and 200-plus jobs, Ms. Amat says. And the model has been taken up by other
institutions, including Wayne State University and Walsh College, creating a network of students and mentors
who can connect with one another locally or nationally.
Community colleges have a network of their own: the National Association for Community College
Entrepreneurship, which was formed in 2002. Traditionally, community colleges train students for existing jobs,
says Trish Truitt, the group's special-projects manager. Now the colleges are paying more attention to job
creation.
When Ivy Tech Community College at Bloomington opened a center for entrepreneurship, its new director
turned to the association for support. The college already offered a course in business-plan development but
wanted to do more. So it devised a six-course certificate program and started offering advising to would-be
entrepreneurs. For that campus, entrepreneurship was a way to stand out from other community colleges. But it
might not be unusual for long.
Dakota County Technical College started focusing on entrepreneurship about a decade ago, when its president
saw four-year institutions doing so. "We were mavericks," recalls Christine Mollenkopf-Pigsley, an instructor in
business and entrepreneurship at the college, in Minnesota. In the years since, many community colleges have
gotten on board, she says. "Those of us that used to be mavericks are now mentors."
Hands-On Learning
Colleges continue to tinker with the teaching of entrepreneurship, and many take an experiential approach.
Whether in a competition, an incubator, or a classroom, they are teaching students how to be entrepreneurs by
having them try to start a business. Often students work in teams, which some instructors think models start-up
culture. And a number of colleges instruct students not to follow the business plans they've created but to test
out the value of their ideas first.
The same technological advances that have lowered the barriers to starting a business have also made it easier to
teach entrepreneurship in a hands-on way, says Chuck Eesley, an assistant professor of management science
and engineering at Stanford University. But entrepreneurship is not for everybody, says Ron Morris, who
directs the entrepreneurial-studies program at Duquesne University's business school. "I call it the Marine Corps
of business," he says. Even those students who are cut out for entrepreneurship, Mr. Morris says, ought to work
at a start-up and learn from its founder for a few years between graduation and starting a company.
Syracuse has long offered an academic program in entrepreneurship but has stepped up with other efforts in the
past few years. In 2009, the first year of the Student Sandbox, groups of one to five students started five
businesses; this year the students are working on 35. In a separate process, student entrepreneurs can also
compete for seed money.
Hands-on learning makes a big difference, says Bruce Kingma, associate provost for entrepreneurship and
innovation. "You can't teach swimming out of a textbook," he says. "You have to throw people into the pool."
Entrepreneurship is a big part of the curriculum at Clarkson University, where freshman business students take
a required business-development course of the sort that's typically offered elsewhere to upperclassmen. Teams
of about 20 at the New York institution come up with a business idea in their first semester; pitch it to alumni,
who may offer venture capital; and run the company in their second semester. If the ventures are profitable,
students can use the gains to pay for tuition and books.
Support from colleges can lead to good outcomes for students. Justin Volling, a senior at St. Olaf College, got
two grants from the Minnesota institution: one for a golf camp he has since carried out, and one for an e-
commerce business he's working on now. Meanwhile he landed a job as a business analyst at Target after
graduation. His interviewers, he says, were impressed by his entrepreneurial experience.
College is a good time for that, says Mr. Volling. Students don't have shareholders to disappoint or employees
to support, he says. "It's a perfect place to actually try out your wings."
The College's Role
If a student's venture takes off, should a college benefit? Clarkson administrators say yes. In fact, they're
recruiting promising entrepreneurs.
It all started when the university's president heard about Matthew Turcotte, a local high-school student who had
started his own business, says Marc S. Compeau, director of the campus's entrepreneurship center. The
president asked Mr. Compeau to do what it would take to persuade Mr. Turcotte to enroll at Clarkson. They
came to an agreement: Clarkson would cover Mr. Turcotte's tuition and give him an office in exchange for a
stake of up to 10 percent in his company, North Shore Solutions, which provides Web design, branding,
marketing, and software development.
Being a full-time student while running a company isn't easy, says Mr. Turcotte, who is now going into his
junior year. But it's worked out well financially. He has been able to cover his remaining college costs without
taking out any loans, so he'll be in a better position to build his company after graduation. Before Clarkson
approached him, Mr. Turcotte thought community college would be his only affordable option.
Meanwhile, Clarkson is expanding its program, albeit slowly. The university has worked out arrangements
similar to Mr. Turcotte's with both a rising senior and an incoming freshman who has a business idea but hasn't
started the venture yet. And next year the campus plans to begin a summer "boot camp" for students from any
college. While the programs will bring in money for the business school, Clarkson officials carefully considered
the ethical implications, Mr. Compeau says, and designed the deals to put students' interests ahead of the
university's.
Belmont University has a different approach to cultivating students' businesses. The Tennessee college offers a
number of entrepreneurship opportunities, including a hatchery for new ventures and an incubator for those a bit
further along. And faculty offer students a "lifetime warranty" of free advice long after they graduate, says Jeff
Cornwall, a professor of entrepreneurship who directs the university's entrepreneurship center. Professors have
agreed not to take a financial interest in students' companies. It's important that faculty give their time to
students and alumni, Mr. Cornwall says, regardless of how large their ventures—and payoffs—might become.
While professors can't invest, Belmont's program does stand to benefit from successful ventures. The university
selects certain start-ups to receive a no-interest Runway Loan of $25,000. After the entrepreneurs repay it, they
commit to giving 1 percent of their profits back to the program.
Jake Jorgovan has benefited from both the "lifetime warranty" and the Runway Loan. While at Belmont, he and
a classmate started Rabbit Hole Creative, which designs video backgrounds for concert tours and events. Mr.
Jorgovan graduated in 2011 and now works on the business full time. "I still meet with Jeff probably once every
two months or so," he says, referring to Mr. Cornwall. Often those meetings take place when the young
entrepreneur faces a big decision or problem and wants some good advice.
If graduates like Mr. Jorgovan look to their alma maters for support, higher education may be able to claim and
keep a reputation as a big player in venture creation.
"The campus is the new frontier for entrepreneurship," says David J. Miller, director of entrepreneurship at
George Mason University's Center for Social Entrepreneurship. For his Ph.D., he is researching the conditions
that allow college students to start successful firms. He is using the historian Frederick Jackson Turner's theory
of the American frontier.
Like the frontier, colleges provide assets, Mr. Miller says: space and human resources. They offer an
unregulated atmosphere with no one person or entity fully in charge. And they are diverse places, both in the
traditional sense and in that they bring together scholars from many disciplines.
Turner thought the frontier set the stage for America's success as a nation. Now colleges are trying to make that
kind of mark on entrepreneurship.
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education - http://chronicle.com/article/European-Union-Looks-to/142441/
October 17, 2013
EUROPEAN UNION LOOKS TO IMPROVE RESEARCH AND INNOVATION
By Alan Osborn
At the 5th European Innovation Summit, big names in research agreed that it was high time for a "wake up
Europe" call. A five-point declaration addressed to European Union policymakers and member states was
agreed after several speakers sought to identify ways to remove obstacles in the way of Europe becoming a
successful innovation economy.
The summit was organized by Knowledge4Innovation, or K4I, and was held at the European Parliament from
September 30 to October 2.
The tone was set by former Polish prime minister and current president of the European Parliament, Jerzy
Buzek, who said that "on the global map of innovation the EU is still closer to the Valley of Death than the
Silicon Valley.”
Buzek, who is vice-chair of the K4I forum governing board, said that “too often, great ideas of European
scientists die before they are implemented by industry."
“We need to revive the EU economy from innovative lethargy,” he said. “Let us take together four steps: we
need to focus on key enabling technologies, strengthen the role of business in defining EU research, create a
European innovation partnership in transport, and use the potential of our young people.”
The agreed final text called on Europe’s research stakeholders to:

Deliver on widely accepted and appreciated new instruments and policies (2014-20) in support of innovation.

Build a culture of "fail-fast" (ie detecting potential failures and responding swiftly to avoid them), "risk
tolerance" and "fast capital" to cross the Valley of Death.

Create a predictable policy environment and embed innovation as a principle in all measures and decisions.

Engage in joint thinking and acting across sectors and along the value chain.

Change what they do: a deeply changed mindset is needed at all levels – among companies, administrations,
and citizens.
Commissioners Speak Out
One of several European commissioners who spoke was Janez Potocnik, commissioner for the environment,
and he called for four actions to promote a circular economy focused on resource efficiency.
"We need to build a shared understanding of the eco-innovation challenges. We need to develop shared targets
and milestones. We need to measure progress toward this vision and targets. We need to address barriers to
innovation in a concrete way," he said.
The commissioner for energy, Günther H. Oettinger, told delegates that “it is not just about research funding, it
is not just about technology development, but it is about an integrated policy from basic research to market
uptake that needs to be developed.”
Johannes Hahn, commissioner for regional policy, said that “innovation is of paramount importance for the
economic growth of regions and countries.” It was up to member states and regions to find what they were good
at, he said.
Other speakers included Hannes Swoboda, a member of the European Parliament, who noted: “On the one
hand, Europe has to develop a new consciousness when collaborating with the United States. On the other hand,
Europe needs to build and improve its own innovation eco-system in order to remain globally competitive.”
Burton Lee, a lecturer in European entrepreneurship and innovation at Stanford School of Engineering, said:
“Europe’s core crisis is a crisis of innovation and not a debt crisis. It is a crisis of chronic poor performance in
creating disruptive products, new companies, new university models and new jobs.”
Europe’s students were “largely disengaged from the innovation agenda,” he added, although there were
excellent role models in Finland and the United Kingdom, “where empowered students have formed their own
entrepreneurship clubs that are important players in their national innovation eco-systems.”
Director general of the European Crop Protection Association and K4I president, Friedhelm Schmider, said that
it was “essential for the EU to promote a better integration of science and policy-making, moving away from
hazard-based legislation and towards a regulatory policy based on robust science and a risk-based approach.”
Europe was capable of unlocking its innovation potential “by working together, embracing a can-do attitude and
by ensuring we focus on maintaining and creating research and development jobs here in Europe.”
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education - http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/universities-fosterentrepreneurship-and-innovation-federal-report-says/48059
November 6, 2013 by Hannah Winston
UNIVERSITIES FOSTER ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION, FEDERAL REPORT SAYS
A study by the U.S. Department of Commerce has found that universities around the country promote
entrepreneurship, innovation, and collaboration among students, faculty members, and industries across
multiple sectors.
On Tuesday the department released a report on its findings, “The Innovative and Entrepreneurial University:
Higher Education, Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Focus.” Based on interviews with more than 130 officials
in higher education, it examines how universities are influencing innovation across the nation.
The report “provides an important look at higher-education efforts to advance the innovation economy in
communities nationwide,” Penny Pritzker, the commerce secretary, said in a written statement. The report is the
department’s response to a 2011 letter from higher-education leaders proposing ways in which the federal
government could aid universities’ efforts.
The goal of the report is to serve as a “source of ideas and encourage connections” between universities and
individuals as well as recognize the programs already in place as universities continue to look for collaborative
opportunities with the federal government.
The report says colleges have focused on promoting student and faculty innovation and entrepreneurship,
facilitating university-industry efforts, encouraging local economic development, and supporting technology
transfer.
And while institutions’ technology-transfer and technology-licensing offices have traditionally helped outside
businesses commercialize products and inventions through universities, the report says they now serve as focal
points for faculty members, students, alumni, and outside businesses to meet and collaborate on projects from
start to finish.
“These offices are now focused on identifying and supporting entrepreneurship on campus, helping start-ups
find the best opportunities and build successful business models, changing the culture of their universities, and
creating companies that will be based in the communities around the university,” the report says.
At the California Institute of Technology, the report points out, not only does the technology-transfer office help
inventors during the provisional patent process; it also helps evaluate how the business and technical models
will work during a patent’s first year to see whether it’s worth going through with the patent process.
As for inspiring faculty members and students to invent and pursue entrepreneurial opportunities in the first
place, the report highlights efforts by the University of Florida and its Innovation Hub, as well as the University
of Nebraska Medical Center’sEntrepreneur in Residence program, where students and faculty members are put
in university-created communities with other innovators. The report notes that the number of entrepreneurial
classes has increased, citing a course on the business of innovation commercialization at the University of
Pittsburgh and a specialization in innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado at Denver.
“While many universities may hope that their students are secretly working on the next Apple or Google,” the
report says, “their main objective is to provide educational value in a way that will focus students’ energies to
help them identify and embrace their areas of interest, and supplement their classroom education with the
development of life skills, such as budgeting, marketing, and professionalism.”
Source: The Tampa Tribune - http://tbo.com/news/education/three-usf-innovators-receive-national-honor20141225/
THREE USF INNOVATORS RECEIVE NATIONAL HONOR
By Jerome R. Stockfisch | Tribune Staff
Published: December 25, 2014 | Updated: December 25, 2014 at 06:58 AM
TAMPA — Three University of South Florida professors are among 170 across the country designated as
2014 Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors.
Michael Fountain, a professor in the College of Engineering and the Morsani College of Medicine who also
holds an endowed chair in the Muma College of Business; Robert Byrne, a professor in the College of
Marine Science; and Victor Poirier, a professor at the USF Institute for Advanced Discovery and Innovation,
earned the titles earlier this month and will be inducted in March at the Academy’s fourth annual meeting in
Pasadena, California.
They were recognized for demonstrating a “prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding
inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of
society,” the academy said.
“We are delighted to recognize the 2014 NAI Fellows and their unparalleled commitment to excellence in
academic invention,” Paul Sanberg, USF senior vice president for research and innovation and president of
the academy, said in an announcement of the honors. “Their many discoveries have made a truly significant
impact on society and we are proud to honor them for these contributions.”
USF has been building a culture of entrepreneurship and research with potential commercial applications, and
the university is now tops in the st ate in generating patents. Five USF professors, along with the head of
Moffitt Cancer Center who holds a joint appointment to USF, were recognized as charter fellows in the
academy’s first class last year.
Fountain is founding director for the USF Interdisciplinary Center for Entrepreneurship. Between 1981 and
1996, he was founder or co-founder of 11 life science, medical device and biotechnology companies.
He is the inventor on more than 70 U.S. and foreign patents used in more than 100 health care products
worldwide.
Byrne has made significant contributions in the field of marine physical chemistry. He holds 13 U.S. and
foreign patents and is one of the co-founders of Ocean Optics Inc., the Dunedin-based manufacturer of the
world’s first miniature spectrometers.
Poirier is former chief executive and president of Thermo Cardiosystems and formerly chief technology
adviser for Thoratec Corp. He is a pioneer of artificial heart technology and invented a device used to take
over the pumping function of the natural heart. He holds 17 U.S. patents.
This month’s announcement brings the number of NAI fellows to 414. Members represent more than 150
prestigious research universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutions.
The 414 fellows collectively hold nearly 14,000 U.S. patents.