Accelerating Ecosystems from Business Schools

The deepening role of business schools in the business environment and innovation ecosystems has fortunately been happening all over the world. Combining theories, evidence, practices and a wide group of stakeholders to discover, define and develop solutions from the campus not only maximizes the third pillar of the Academy (service to society, in addition to education and research), but also expands the logic of open innovation and the role of business schools in this journey.  

To highlight the scope of this movement, which is aligned with the European Commission's call for innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education institutions, we share some cases that go beyond the examples of Portugal in this concerted effort between the Academy, its external partners and its internal agents. These examples reflect multiple nuances from different authors linked to strategy, development and collaboration in organizational innovation: from Peter Drucker to Ernest Gundling, from Henry Chesbrough to Clayton Christensen.

The related cases are always elevating the role of the students as a start-up element. The knowledge imparted by professors and researchers is used by them to identify opportunities and develop business models - either on their own behalf or to respond to the challenges presented by the companies and institutions that connect with the universities. These can support student ideas even before a startup is formalized, or any Corporate Venturing initiative is set up: depending on the respective strategy and agenda, each organization participating in the ecosystem provides the necessary support, accompanied by the actionable knowledge passed on by the Academy, so that the projects evolve into viable models and solutions. This journey of maturing innovation can start "from scratch" and go all the way to implementation, without neglecting the essential triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit which characterizes the most progressive schools.  

Judge Business School, part of the University of Cambridge, offers the Accelerate Cambridge Program, designed to help students develop embryonic business hypotheses. Partner companies offer mentoring, initial funding and resources to turn these ideas into prototypes with measurable results. At the Wharton School, through the Penn Wharton Innovation Fund, students receive pre-seed investment from a fund and have access to mentoring, technology and possibly additional funding from participating external organizations. In return, they negotiate future participation or integrate these efforts into their open innovation agenda.  

The Challenge+ program at HEC Paris covers nine months of applied training, prototype validation and structured design of a business model for the students. Companies, corporate funds and institutions participate through research and development support and help in preparing a business plan that can attract complementary funding.  

And we could cite many other examples: the Massachussets Institute of Technology Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, of the MIT Sloan School of Management, which manages a fund-consortium of companies following the agenda of interests of each of the "shareholders"; or HackLBS at the London Business School (LBS), which brings together consultants, investors and companies in the classic 48-hour model, in which creatives, start-up managers and coders come up with possible solutions, naturally at an early stage, to major real issues facing the world and society - the starting point for a journey that can take these and other projects to the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at LBS.

The results of these efforts? That will be the focus of a future article.  

And all this is just the tip of the iceberg of collaborations from campus to market, from market to campus and other derivations, exploring models and other stakeholders. Like DTU - Technical University of Denmark, which has been working hard for over a decade to reap the rewards of a project based on raising awareness and supporting academic researchers so that their projects have a greater market vision and application; or the Entrepreneurial Institute at New York University (NYU) which, through initiatives such as an Innovation Venture Fund, directly develops and markets its students' ideas.  

These are concrete actions in favor of the innovation value chain, and they take place in all economically dynamic and competitive countries. The convergence of interests between academia, investors, students and organizations - including the rapprochement between business schools and science and technology schools, public-private partnerships and a more attentive listening to the perspectives of civil society - are essential to materialize the future that we intend to turn into reality, based on knowledge and the collection of benefits for all parties involved.

This text is a republication of an opinion article originally published in Exame.