Rethinking academia’s role in innovation
Why Canadian universities need to better support scholar-innovators to catalyze academic entrepreneurship.
The academic model has not changed much in the last couple of centuries. University professors primarily teach and publish research, sometimes more of one than the other.
With minor variations, the model has worked well and continues to serve society by advancing and transferring the knowledge that feeds continuous progress.
However, our changing world and the needs of our society now call for an additional form of professor: the professor-entrepreneur, who can periodically step away from traditional university life and place one foot into the commercial realm to focus on moving the products of research, such as medicines, materials and processes, into the wider world.
Once, large companies funded most of their own research and development, often employing whole departments of university-educated experts to keep their offerings fresh and current.
In the leaner model of post-modern business, though, R&D has become more of a luxury, moving more of the responsibility for creating new technologies to academics and their institutions.
The old academic model does not account well for this shift, and what’s especially been lacking has been a link between the laboratory and the marketplace.
Globally, universities are reinventing and restructuring themselves as engines not only of scholarship and research, but also of entrepreneurship and commercialization.
Canada must do the same, not only to support and retain our researchers, but to solve real-world problems with the kind of creativity that only boundary-breaking scholars can offer.
Following a 2022 op-ed in the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business calling for the creation of a professor-entrepreneur role, McMaster University launched a Professor-Entrepreneur Fellowship, with a mission to support scholars who are not only advancing knowledge in labs and classrooms, but also translating knowledge into companies, products, and technologies that can serve the public good.
Today’s professors are mentors, public intellectuals, grant writers, collaborators, and increasingly, entrepreneurs. They identify market gaps, spin out companies based on their research, create and license intellectual property, and engage with private-sector partners – all while performing their duties as classical academics.
This emerging, hybrid identity isn’t a dilution of academic values. It’s an evolution of them. Some of the most transformative breakthroughs, from mRNA vaccines to AI-powered diagnostics, are coming from scholars who understand both science and the strategy required to bring that science into the real world.
Canada is hardly alone in grappling with the question of how best to support scholar-innovators. Countries around the world are exploring bold new models to catalyze academic entrepreneurship.
In the US, one example is the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps that trains researchers to think like entrepreneurs and helps them validate business models and accelerate tech transfer. Universities such as MIT and Stanford have well-established ecosystems where startups, venture capital investment, and academic labs are deeply intertwined.
Another example is the University of Cambridge in the UK, and its enterprise arm, Cambridge Enterprise, which invests in and supports academic-led startups. This has given rise to an entire cluster of deep-tech companies and a thriving regional economy built around knowledge transfer.
In Asia, countries such as Singapore have invested heavily in university innovation hubs, notably at the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University, blending state-of-the-art research with entrepreneurial training and industry partnerships.
Canada – despite its research excellence – is still catching up. We punch above our weight in academic publishing but lag in commercialization, particularly when it comes to translating deep-tech and health innovations into scalable ventures. Programs like McMaster’s new fellowship are a step in the right direction—but we need more national support and recognition.
At the heart of this global movement is the simple but powerful idea that entrepreneurial professorships – positions that formally recognize and encourage translational work – are essential to a thriving innovation system.
Such professorships provide teaching relief, funding, mentorship, and institutional backing for professors to build companies, file patents, or collaborate with industry without having to abandon their research responsibilities. They validate entrepreneurship not as an interruption from scholarly work, but as a legitimate, high-impact extension of it.
The payoff can be immense. When faculty members can wear both hats – academic and entrepreneurial – they are empowered to create jobs, attract investment, train new generations of professor-entrepreneurs and, most importantly, ensure that publicly funded research benefits the public in meaningful ways with sustainable returns that benefit the economy, the environment and society.
Canada has no shortage of brilliant academic minds. Too often, though, their work stays locked in academic journals when it could be changing lives. Unlocking that potential requires systemic support, policy reform, and above all, a reimagining of what it means to be a professor in the 21st century.
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1 Comments
This statement is not accurate:
‘The academic model has not changed much in the last couple of centuries. University professors primarily teach and publish research, sometimes more of one than the other.’
Research did not become common in universities until after the foundation of the University of Berlin in 1809 and PhDs weren’t common until the early 20th century.
Commercialisation is about 10 times more expensive than conducting the research to be commercialised, and of course it is very risky. Universities could adopt this role, but it is mostly done by other organisations, some of which are related to a university.