Being an Entrepreneurial Academic

In a newsfeed on Higher Education issues from the States there was a recent series of blogs on academic entrepreneurship. It offered advice over four weeks with suggested exercises in order to help readers get their own particular ‘business’ off the ground. The section that particularly struck me was on the differences between the academic and the entrepreneurial mindset. I am not sure there was anything new here, but it was the way in which it was laid out, so simply and so clearly, and the way the comparison was made with the ‘academic mindset’ that particularly struck me. The author identified five elements to the entrepreneurial mindset:

• Academics move slow. Entrepreneurs move fast.
• Academics study problems. Entrepreneurs solve problems.
• Academics function in constraint. Entrepreneurs create possibility.
• Academics focus on patterns. Entrepreneurs focus on the exceptions.
• Academics loathe promotion. Entrepreneurs live to sell.

There is probably some element of stereotyping going on here and the text does recognise a little more subtlety than is suggested by the titles, but the basic principles should be clear enough. It was the text under the first of these headings that really made me think:

‘As an academic my approach to change was to move slowly, deliberately and cautiously. I believed that the best way to minimize mistakes was through extensive conversation, committee meetings, producing volumes of written material, etc. In other words, the best way to make a decision was by slowly moving through a process that involved lots of talking, thinking and analyzing before doing anything. As an entrepreneur I act first and analyze later. Quick movement is essential because my goal is to get into action and fail as fast as possible. Every time I fail, I can evaluate what worked (and didn’t work), make quick adjustments, and get back into action. Failing gives me lots of data that I can use to adapt as I’m moving forward.’

That willingness to fail, and the learning from failure as part of the process of development, was something that others had also commented on in relation to entrepreneurship and something that I am more than aware that we discourage within the academic world.

 

As part of my role of Deputy Pro-vice Chancellor (Staffing) I have aimed to apply something of this logic to the process of culture change within the University. It is usually said that culture change takes time, and to fully embed any particular change that is undoubtedly true. With only three to four years to make any kind of impact, however, I have had to think in much shorter time scales. My line manager commented in the annual review earlier in the summer that I seemed to have a knack for start and finish projects. I would prefer to say that I am applying entrepreneurial methods: establishing agendas, making changes, achieving results and moving on.

There are three or four areas where this has been particularly successful (although the exact methods have changed in each case, and that goes back to the idea of learning on the go). With employability I was asked to chair a review. I identified the issues (the lack of embeddedness) constructed a strategy and, with colleagues in the Careers Network costed out what was possible. We took this to senior management, got the go ahead to make the changes (although on a lower budgets than originally requested) and created a model for employability that has by any standards been successful, lifting Birmingham close to the top of the league tables. What is more the model has been taken and applied in different ways in a number of different UK universities, becoming known as the ‘Birmingham Model’, a clear sign of recognition and success. I followed this up with the establishment of an in-house student employment agency (Worklink) despite being told that we could never deliver on this internally, given the University's track record on such projects, and would be better off buying an existing model off the shelf. I made the case for doing it ourselves and the result has been groundbreaking and succesful.

Switching areas slightly, I was asked to act as academic lead on a Higher Education Academy sponsored project on Valuing Teaching at Birmingham (VT@B). This aimed to identify how academic staff perceived teaching across the institution and to make recommendation to improve the outlook and value of teaching as a part of the wider academic process. The issue here was perhaps more of perception than reality but there were clear things that could be done and I made it my task to get these on the agenda of senior management and delivered. We now support the academic promotions process with workshops and training for Heads of School, placing teaching alongside research as well as addressing other equality and diversity issues. We have also established a Birmingham Teaching Academy and advertised for international Birmingham Teaching Fellows to encourage and promote excellence and innovation in teaching. The landscape has changed and teaching is now talked about alongside research as one of the strengths of the University. More importantly, however, the fact that the project existed, was very well publicised and that I spoke to the senior team about it constantly meant that the valuing of teaching became part of the conscious messaging of the institution even before the project reported and that, in itself, has made a significant difference to perceptions.

I could point to similar action around academic performance and on issues of equality and diversity, perhaps with less obvious or visible success at present, but in each case I set out with a clear objective, a sense of urgency in terms of implementation and what I would generally think of as an entrepreneurial mind set (as defined in the points set out above). I think I have surprised myself, at least looking back on the last three years, on how successful some of this has been. What I probably need to do now, however, is to see whether the same principles can be applied to research as well as to the management of the institution. Whether I can make the entrepreneurial mindset work for me individually as well as for the University as a whole.