Academic Entrepreneurship as a Catalyst for Quality Higher Education

2. Objectives

• 1.

  Define Academic Entrepreneurship and Academic Leadership.

• 2.

  Understand the Higher Education System in India and benchmark it.

• 3.

  Decipher the symbiotic relation between Academic Entrepreneurship and Academic Leadership to enhance the quality of research and technology in Higher Education and commercialize it for value creation and societal development.

4. Background

Prior to understanding the bi-focal role of academic entrepreneurs and academic leaders in enhancing the quality of higher education in India, it is essential to understand their conceptual meaning and evolve with an appropriate definition. If we look into the matter carefully, we will see that academic and entrepreneurial activities are not incompatible. They go hand in hand and it depends on this very symbiotic relationship between the academic leaders and academic entrepreneurs. Academic Entrepreneurship is a new concept that has emerged in the field of education where a students or researchers or even professors of certain universities sets up a business company in order to commercialize the results of his or her research and the university takes the responsibility of patenting and publicizing the result. And here comes the involvement of both the academic entrepreneur and the academic leaders, where they work together in making the product a success thus resulting in the exposure of the university and the researcher personally as well monetarily.