An EU-funded Erasmus project titled “Transforming Academic Knowledge to Develop Entrepreneurial Universities in Pakistan (Take-Up)” provided us the opportunity to learn entrepreneurial coaching in University of Saarland, Germany, for changing the approach from academia-based research to business development. It was an opportunity to understand the fundamentals and strengths to develop successful business ventures by facilitating students.
A team equipped with high motivation, enthusiasm and liberty, besides strong entrepreneurial mindset, is vital to bring incremental improvements to convert business ideas into a successful business venture with financial backing by the universities and the government. Strong industry-academia linkages are required to understand the issues and challenges associated with the real business world relating to business operations right from input to output and production to distribution. Collaborations between the academic community and the business sector can speed advancement. The establishment of partnerships with knowledge consumers and the mobilization of resources to supplement public research funding may be facilitated by collaborative engagement with industry. Companies provide academic originators with access to their internal capabilities in order to promote their ideas. In addition, some firms provide research space in incubators where entrepreneurs can gain access to instruments, reagents, instructional programs, and introductions to other investors at a low cost.
One of the most important and basic approaches is to divert academia from theoretical to practical by connecting the industrial knowledge and experiences into the curriculum. Students should be facilitated to pitch their ideas on the relevant platforms and convince the potential funding sources to support business ideas in the initial stages. Most startups fail because there is no market for their product. In most cases, researchers spend their time developing items that no customer wants. The largest concern is the lack of consumer communication and product design.
All prototypes should be prepared using the fabrication lab facilities. Fabrication lab staff should be highly skillful to guide the students about the various aspects of prototypes development. Support from other key departments like, business administration and management, material laboratories, computer sciences and cyber securities, is pivotal to work on ideas related to high-tech industry, such as automotive, smart engineering equipment, medical as well as cyber security equipment industries.
University of Saarland is playing its role as an entrepreneurial hub with all basic facilities ranging from facilitation, guidance to provide in-house facilities to develop prototypes. The university is well renowned for producing successful spinoffs directly contributing to the country economically as well as by producing job opportunities. The universities may become successful in developing entrepreneurial mindset as well as the system support may prove helpful in producing successful business ventures due to the favorable ecosystem.
Pakistani universities can also progress in the same way by adding some efforts and motivation. All-out support by the universities should be available for students working on their startups to keep students motivated, help them resolve their issues and overcome the challenges faced during the idea’s maturation stages. Availability of high-tech fabrication labs will be more helpful and beneficial for motivation as it is used to develop prototypes to visualize the actual version of the ideas to test its functionality and the problem being faced during the development phases.
DR HAMMAD ISMAIL AND SHAHZADA BABAR
UNIVERSITY OF GUJRAT, GUJRAT
