1. Introduction Across the US and other developed countries, universities have been fundamental to regional economic vitality. For example, Stanford, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco have been playing a key role in driving the economic prosperity of the Bay Area (including Silicon Valley). Likewise, MIT, Harvard, Tufts and the Boston area’s other universities have been significantly contributing to that region’s economic vibrancy. This awareness of the relationship between universities and economies has motivated universities (and their jurisdictional governments) to augment university programs and resources that drive the commercialization of university-developed technologies. These programs and resources encompass: applied research, entrepreneurship education, technology transfer, idea incubators, startup accelerators, new venture competitions, mentor networks, industry collaborations, and venture capital resources. These programs and resources, in aggregate, are referred to as a (UIE). university innovation ecosystem This paper develops strategies for creating robust UIEs by, (1) analyzing several UIEs; (2) identifying correlations among top ecosystems, (3) positing how those correlations maximize ecosystem performance, and (4) describing a strategic framework for segmenting university ecosystems. 2. Analysis In July 2015, Forbes published a ranking titled, Startup Schools: America’s Most Entrepreneurial Universities: . The author is familiar with the UIEs at dozens of campuses including many of those in the top 50 of the Forbes list. While UIEs can be characterized by many attributes, the top UIEs share two key characteristics. First, the top ecosystems have strong pools of innovative and entrepreneurial students, faculty and staff. Second, the leading ecosystems have relatively decentralized entrepreneurship-related activities, not top-down centralized control of activities. While the importance of human talent is obvious, the benefits of a decentralized UIE are not to most people—especially because decentralization has tradeoffs (such as cost inefficiencies due to overlapping programs, and confusion for people trying to leverage UIEs). Therefore, a methodical analysis was conducted of a variety of UIEs in order to assess the observations about organizational structure as well as talent. Organization: To quantify the extent to which a particular UIE has centralized or decentralized activities, web searches of that ecosystem’s university were conducted using words such as and If a university’s “entrepreneurship” “startups”. search results reveal a plethora of autonomous programs and resources, then the university’s ecosystem is characterized as decentralized.
1. Introduction Across the US and other developed countries, universities have been fundamental to regional economic vitality. For example, Stanford, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco have been playing a key role in driving the economic prosperity of the Bay Area (including Silicon Valley). Likewise, MIT, Harvard, Tufts and the Boston area’s other universities have been significantly contributing to that region’s economic vibrancy. This awareness of the relationship between universities and economies has motivated universities (and their jurisdictional governments) to augment university programs and resources that drive the commercialization of university-developed technologies. These programs and resources encompass: applied research, entrepreneurship education, technology transfer, idea incubators, startup accelerators, new venture competitions, mentor networks, industry collaborations, and venture capital resources. These programs and resources, in aggregate, are referred to as a university innovation ecosystem (UIE). This paper develops strategies for creating robust UIEs by, (1) analyzing several UIEs; (2) identifying correlations among top ecosystems, (3) positing how those correlations maximize ecosystem performance, and (4) describing a strategic framework for segmenting university ecosystems. 2. Analysis In July 2015, Forbes published a ranking titled, Startup Schools: America’s Most Entrepreneurial Universities: . The author is familiar with the UIEs at dozens of campuses including many of those in the top 50 of the Forbes list. While UIEs can be characterized by many attributes, the top UIEs share two key characteristics. First, the top ecosystems have strong pools of innovative and entrepreneurial students, faculty and staff. Second, the leading ecosystems have relatively decentralized entrepreneurship-related activities, not top-down centralized control of activities. While the importance of human talent is obvious, the benefits of a decentralized UIE are not to most people—especially because decentralization has tradeoffs (such as cost inefficiencies due to overlapping programs, and confusion for people trying to leverage UIEs). Therefore, a methodical analysis was conducted of a variety of UIEs in order to assess the observations about organizational structure as well as talent. Organization: To quantify the extent to which a particular UIE has centralized or decentralized activities, web searches of that ecosystem’s university were conducted using words such as “entrepreneurship” and “startups”. If a university’s search results reveal a plethora of autonomous programs and resources, then the university’s ecosystem is characterized as decentralized.
UIE%20Development%20Strategies.docx