Volume 14, Number 1 Article by Venkat Chandrasekhar , Vijay Chandru March, 2002
Commercial Academics: An Indian Story :
If we accept the premise that India has great intellectual capital in science and technology, then we must wonder why the premier research institutes and universities have been unable to drive an IP based entrepreneurial sector. Undoubtedly, there are many contributing factors to the emergence of the Silicon Valley around Stanford and Berkeley, Route 128 around MIT and Harvard, Cambridge around the legendary university, or Tel Aviv around Tel Aviv University. The availability of capital, good incubation centres, and local test markets for products and services are as important or more than the mere presence of universities which assure the availability of highly skilled manpower and a rich source of IP.
However, the single most important factor that has held India back on this score has been the extreme conservatism in university policies. The trendsetter in progressive policies towards faculty entrepreneurship has certainly been the US. The seeds of commercial academics in the US were sown by the legislation known as the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980.
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