Entrepreneurial universities , beyond all else, need entrepreneurial faculty. There is no one right solution for every university since all innovation, like politics, is local and each institution has different leadership, assets, cultures, policies and procedures that will work in one place and not another. In addition, medical schools have to comply with accreditation requirements that lag behind new ideas, curriculum reform and models. In essence, they are challenged, like every other business, to navigate how to get from the now to the next to the new.
Here are the issues facing medical schools and academic medical centers.
However, based on those who have been successful, there are some recurring themes:
1. You can’t get blood from a stone. Innovation starts with mindset and most physicians don’t have it. Faculty entrepreneurs are not made but rather self selected and supported.
2. Redefine academic scholarship to include innovators and entrepreneurs. Redefine the scholarship of innovation and entrepreneurship.
3. Surround them with champions, mentors and teams that have been successful.
4. Find leaderpreneurs who will exhort the hearts of those who are interested.
5. Eliminate anti-entrepreneurial rules and policies that prohibit the growth in intrapreneurial ecosystems.
6. Give them a place off campus to fail safely.
7. Recruit for innovation and demand that department heads are accountable for faculty development in entrepreneurship. Since most won’t know how to do that, then get them outside help to do it or replace the department heads with people who will.
8. Give them the money they need to demonstrate technical feasibility at the start using innovative advancement strategies and models.
9. Create a transparent innovation management system.
10. Know when to throw them out of the nest to fly on their own.
11. Give promotion and tenure credit for entrepreneurial activities, including teaching, practice and service
12. Include innovation and entrepreneurship in their teaching portfolio
13. Integrate innovation and entrepreneurship into activities consistent with the academic missions of education (medical education technopreneurs), research/development/commercialization (technopreneurs), patient care (medical practice entrepreneurs) and community service (social and public health entrepreneurs).
14. Align objectives and key results along the premed, medical school, residency and practice spectrum. Make practicing medicine using a viable business model an ACGME competency.
15. Provide non-clinical , physician entrepreneur career tracks similar to research and clinical tracks. Here’s why.
16. Identify philanthropreneurs to support programmatic initiatives.
18. Cclebrate academic physician entrepreneurs
The Corporate Executive Board identified seven personas of internal champions. They are:
- Go-getter
- Skeptic
- Friend
- Teacher
- Guide
- Climber
- Blocker
Medical schools should target those most likely to accelerate innovation: members of the GSD club, good rebels and teachers.
Some think entrepreneurial faculties are an oxymoron. In most places, they are. In more and more schools, though, visionary leaders are waiting for the laggards to move on or die and focusing instead on the next generation of faculty innovators and early adopters to create the future of their universities.
