Passion drives universities’ entrepreneurship project, and it is paying off

No membership fee is required to join the Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE) programme. “It’s just heart. You just must buy in and have the heart for the work.”

Not singling out each report but focusing on the challenges they had highlighted, Cloete said their main findings were:

• Funding was a challenge, and it “will always be”, he said. “Of course, universities have to invest their own money into entrepreneurial activities, but it is very important to develop partnerships with the private sector to help with seed funding and also the eventual commercialisation of the innovations,” he said.

• The need to change mindsets. The culture at universities is still focused on research output. “We need to create awareness and, in this respect, EDHE has done extremely well” through the Lekgotla, attended by more than 400 delegates in 2022, and the Executive Leadership Workshop we had earlier this year,” he said. “The challenge is to communicate clearly, the benefits of commercialising research to stakeholders, both internal and external to the university. It is also important to focus on the IP (intellectual property) pipeline, to strengthen it and generate momentum, which is easier for some universities than others,” said Professor Cloete.

Researchers also need to acquire an inductive mindset. They often have a reductive mindset. This involves setting a hypothesis and then proving it right or wrong. An inductive mindset, the creative risk-based one, where the future is not predictable, is what drives many entrepreneurs and many entrepreneurial activities.

• The need to build partnerships with industry and big research organisations across the globe that are interested in IP development. In South Africa, this includes the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Medical Research Council (SAMRC), and other councils such as the Agricultural Research Council (ARC).

“These networks are crucial if we want to take our research to market and want an international footprint in the shortest space of time. There are people out there who know exactly how to do this,” he said.

• The need to continue to share good practice between universities in South Africa and to establish a policy framework for entrepreneurship. A policy framework had seen research “skyrocket, making a big difference to South Africa. We need a similar policy for entrepreneurship, where entrepreneurship can be incentivised, not only at the national level, but also at an institutional level. In that respect, we need to encourage companies to engage with universities,” he said.He said universities needed to replicate previous co-funding modalities, where companies had provided funding for research or capacity building to universities, and government had matched the amounts.

• More commercialisation of the social sciences, arts and humanities. Here the impact of traditional knowledge played a role. And there was social impact too, as these activities often created job opportunities.Professor Cloete said entrepreneurship was about “taking the patentable innovation into the wider community for societal or economic benefit.  We have created the landscape to move forward on a national policy on entrepreneurship, which will guide the system forward and make sure that our universities start contributing to employment, economic growth, and the eradication of poverty. ”

Furthermore, the participation of female entrepreneurs in the Intervarsity had also increased, with 677 women applicants.

“The students say to us: ‘nothing for us without us,’” said Clarke. So EDHE’s second CoP supporting student entrepreneurship comprises students, one from each university, bringing it to a total of 26.

“They are all student entrepreneurs who are in good academic standing, and who have been selected by the institutions to serve on this national body. They’ve got to have a very clear focus — only their business and academics. This is not the space for other priorities,” said Clarke.

Chairperson of this CoP, Dr Thea van der Westhuizen, Senior Lecturer in Management and Entrepreneurship in the School of Management, IT and Governance at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said they had four task teams whose activities contributed towards EDHE’s national agenda. “Everything fits into each other like chains within the ecosystem coming together,” she said.

The CoP’s task teams contributed to:

• The EDHE Kickoff and Train the Trainer initiative earlier this year;
• The lekgotla preparation – identifying themes on research, learning and teaching, academic entrepreneurship, and best practices; and then training themselves through a kickoff event;
• The forthcoming Student Entrepreneurs Week; and
• the EDHE Learning and Teaching Excellence awards, where lecturers submitted a best practice case study of an academic or extracurricular entrepreneurship programme taking place at universities. “We had a fantastic response. The abstracts are being adjudicated, and the best 20 will be invited to submit full case studies. These will go through another round of peer review in partnership with the British Council, where we will select the top three cases and the award will be presented to the top case at the gala evening taking place in November,” she said. They would be publishing the 20 best case studies.

Some postgraduate students did not know what to research. Institutions needed to guide them towards impactful research. “We need to identify research topics that will influence policy development,” she said, noting that even though South Africa has policies, they fall short when it comes to entrepreneurship and are not always clear.

“Another challenge to all institutions is to identify a space where we can assist students to run successful businesses,” she said. It wasn’t enough to just talk about entrepreneurship. She also implored universities’ partners in industry to extend their assistance to student entrepreneurs, to bolster their business successes while on campus.

“We request everyone in the research space to come and join our community of practice. By doing it together, we will be able to achieve the EDHE goals.” concluded Dr Vezi-Magigaba.

Dr Norah Clarke said in 2023, EDHE would open a second layer of membership “to bring in people from the community, business, industry, public sector, and NPOs (not-for-profit organisations), who want to work with universities in support of entrepreneurship development.”

And with much fanfare, Ms Zana Boshoff, USAf’s Project Manager for Entrepreneurship, announced that the University of the Western Cape (UWC) would be hosting the EDHE Lekgotla 2023.

“It therefore gives me great pleasure to invite EDHE, higher education, our communities, industry leaders and the public and private sector to UWC for the Lekgotla 2023. See you in Cape Town,” said Professor Lawack.

Gillian Anstey is a contract writer for Universities South Africa