Unleash the entrepreneurs says Uni of Sydney start-ups champion

It takes a nation to raise a start-up argues Alex Carpenter: a new generation of potential graduate entrepreneurs needs across the system support.

Awakening from a pandemic is, perhaps somewhat ironically, an entrepreneur’s dream. This is because it is a once-in-a-lifetime oppor­tunity to unlock ground­breaking inventions from within sandstone towers.

New federal Education Minister Alan Tudge has glimpsed this potential by outlining a plan to commercialise university research. This is commendable, but there is one important piece of the puzzle that hasn’t been addressed — how university inventions actually get into the free market.

Australia doesn’t need more researchers, or investors, or large corporations. What we need are more entrepreneurs. They are the key to Australia’s new economy, and it takes a nation to raise a start-up.

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To pull this off, I would suggest we need to solve two problems; university intellectual property rules, and the level of encouragement given to students to pursue entrepreneurship.

Generally, Australian universities and their IP rules do not achieve their desired commercialisation outcomes because they operate from a flawed foundation. They believe the best people to make the leap from lab to market are those who work for the university or through large corporate partnerships, but this is simply wrong.

Alex Carpenter

Our higher education system has only two methods for getting out a great invention. First, it invites the researcher to become an entrepreneur. This is madness because it requires highly specialised individuals to step away from decades’ worth of learning and a high-paying job to try their hand at entrepreneurship.

The only other method available is to convince a large corporation to license the invention. This again lacks suitable rationality because there is rarely a clear path for the large corporation gaining a return on its investment due to the early stage of development.

Both of these situations are understandable; the researchers and corporations cannot afford to take the required risks, and neither of them have the time or skill to find where the market exists.

The key to unlocking Australia’s economic and technological recovery is motivated entrepreneurs. They are the people who are in pursuit of opportunity, beyond the resources under control, for the purpose of creating wealth for the individual and adding value to society.

We need to let entrepreneurs off their leash, providing them free access to inventions and encouraging researchers to use their energy and unique skill set.

Some may raise the concern that most entrepreneurs lack the deep technical knowledge required for such endeavours. However, there is a big difference between knowing how to make a pen and being able to sell it.

Not all entrepreneurs need a deep understanding of the underlying technology to identify and validate that there is a market for it. What they need is access, support and an encouraging environment around them.

I know this works because I have more than 80 bachelor students at the University of Sydney who are doing it.

Without any deep technical knowledge, they are finding markets for patented inventions from across the university. This process is leading to the creation of student-owned businesses with university IP at their heart.

If you are convinced that Australia needs more entrepreneurs, here is what needs to happen.

We need to raise up positive and diverse entrepreneurial role models to increase awareness of the opportunities that await for those brave enough to grab it.

We need a culture that encourages and supports entrepreneurs, and that doesn’t allow the tall poppy syndrome to cut down those with the visionary vigour to take risks with great ideas.

We need an increase in entrepreneurship self-efficacy, which we achieve by training those, however young, who put up their hands.

One way to do this is to incorporate entrepreneurship into all aspects of the education system. This means not only universities but schools and vocational training as well.

The recent NSW government report In the Same Sentence: Bringing Higher and Vocational Training Together, carried out by David Gonski and Peter Shergold, echoes this call by laying out the need for increased partnerships between schools, industry and higher education.

Some of these entrepreneurial partnerships are already happening in the private sector, such as through innovative approaches in the Hunter region by groups such as Alphacrucis College, but the authors rightly identify that there need to be more widespread opportunities for this in the public sphere.

One idea in the Gonski-Shergold report to achieve the education expansion is to create a NSW institute of applied technology that delivers fully integrated theoretical and practical curriculums. This would be a perfect vehicle to deliver the skills required to create businesses that are built on university IP. This process gives students the opportunity to learn all of the highly employable skills needed, including critical thinking, communication and problem solving.

This is the talent pool we need to be investing in, and with one in three young Australians unemployed or needing more work we face a huge untapped resource of potential entrepreneurs.

Don’t forget Canva, Atlassian and Afterpay were all started by fresh graduates.

State education ministers, as well as Tudge, have a once-in-a-century opportunity to set free the next generation of Australian entrepreneurs. Let’s give them access to the inventions they need, support their commercialisation and support them to build the nation they will inherit.

Alex Carpenter is an associate lecturer in entrepreneurship and start-up programs manager at the University of Sydney business school.