Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/406930
VLASTI M I L ESTSSK/TH I N KSTOCK 5 6 VLASTI M I L ESTSSK/TH I N KSTOCK Should business schools sit back and observe while these depart- ments develop their own programs in innovation and entrepreneur- ship? Or should business schools design basic courses for students in other disciplines and help other departments achieve their goals? The growing interest in business is an opportunity for business schools to take on roles at our universi- ties that we have never taken on before. Entrepreneurship and inno- vation leadership have never been more relevant across campuses. Incentivize risk. A school that is not taking risks is not moving forward, and a school that is not moving forward is in jeopardy of becoming a nonentity in today's market. Create incentives that encourage faculty to experiment and that discourage fear of failure. Such freedom might lead faculty to design new curricula, submit grant proposals, and support interdisci- plinary initiatives. Act like a startup. Innovative busi- ness schools sometimes have to make something out of nothing. They need to "bootstrap" just like a startup. Today, at the Rady School, we continue to follow a self-supporting financial model, even at a public university. Business schools can act like startups in other ways as well. For instance, in 2003, Rady started Lab2Market, a series of courses in our MBA program in which entrepreneurs learn how to turn fledgling ideas into market oppor- tunities. We had no state funding for the program, and we had only one faculty member on staff to teach the courses. We started small with a weekend program. We flew in faculty from institutions where I had previously served. We asked entrepreneurs and venture capital- ists to volunteer as mentors. The school engaged the community to support its launch. As we grew Lab2Market, it became our "innovation maypole," around which our other programs revolved, from our Rady Venture Fund to our StartR Accelerator, just launched in 2013. During the 2013–2014 academic year alone, startups from this program raised nearly US$2 billion through ven- ture funding, partnerships, and the first Rady alum IPO. Seventy-five alumni-founded businesses are viable and operating today, hir- ing employees and raising capital. Forty percent of those businesses evolved from Lab2Market. In 2009, entrepreneur Pierre Slei- man further developed Go Green Agriculture, a hydroponic organic farm, for his Lab2Market project. Sleiman now has five acres of green- houses producing approximately 500,000 head of lettuce, kale, and other greens every month. In August, he was recognized at the White House as one of the Obama Administration's "Champions of Change" for his agricultural prac- tices. That is the kind of innovation business schools can inspire. Defining the Future Business schools must practice innovation and be transformative in purpose as well as in behavior. Schools that are unable or unwilling to continuously reinvent themselves will be at risk, but the business schools that thrive will be those that help define the future. Most business schools are steeped heavily in tradition—they are not accustomed to reinvention. However, in an innovation revolution, we must embrace it. That is the only way we can deliver the value that our com- munities need. So I share the mantra for our Rady School community— never stop starting up! Robert S. Sullivan is the dean and Stan- ley and Pauline Foster Endowed Chair at the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego. The business schools that thrive will be those that help define the future.