Technopreneurship

In an age of ever-changing information technology, Kashmir cannot lag behind. Aijaz A Dagga deciphers the idea of Technopreneurship as how this tool can be adopted a means of society development

There is a strong bond between Technology innovation and entrepreneurship. Developed nations have an exciting entrepreneurial foundation of skilled youth with passion, subject insight and creativity. The population of such nations are driven by values of originality, persistence and given to venturing. The structure based on such principles and guidelines upon which science, technology and innovative businesses are built. The role of higher education institution from social institution to conduct research and develop technology directly for economic development by commercialization of technology in developed countries has contributed a huge in new businesses to sustain.

This piece will try to highlight the critical need for developing nations to realize and promptly apply Technopreneurship as a lifestyle among its young citizens.

Technology entrepreneurship must be pivotal of nation’s aspirations in today’s world of information technology and commerce production.

I would try to focus on the relevance of adopting Technopreneurship as a means of society development by establishing inter-relationship between scientists, engineers and business sector with aim of improving talent in research and development.

Introduction

Wealth is an intangible resource that is formed when other elements like motivation and skill are put to use in resolving human issues or creating desirability. There are various spaces in which this can be achieved: Art, Agriculture, Tourism, Technology, Engineering, Health etc. The fundamental intangible ingredients mandatory for wealth enrichment has been identified to consist of Information and Knowledge (Carayannis, 2003).

A focused entrepreneur, who would venture into Tourism to make wealth in Kashmir, would accustom himself of basic knowledge of areas, hotels, their qualities, relevance to tourism and how this can be enhanced. A good understanding of this subject with the advanced tools of managing such industry would expose many facts and figures related to how services can generate revenue and when revenue is generated a person is said to be wealthy.

Attitude of the individual in a nation brings society a face value; such people will never get satisfied with mere knowledge and understanding of a subject, but are very desirous of gaining knowledge in order to facilitate value addition for the entire society.  It is worth to remain informed and updated with regards to people influence in creation of nation’s wealth with right attitude, skills and knowledge. Hence, measure of good wealth creation is determined by knowledge and attitude of the entrepreneur.

The combination of entrepreneurship and Information Technology as a Knowledge for ‘wealth creation’ and changing lives bring up Technopreneurship.

When technological skills and learning attitude work together in a society, expect visionaries who contribute economic, social and scientific growth and reputation.

Young Minds Big Change

Entrepreneur as an Individual

All start-up business aims at growth and make profits, there are various risks associated while venturing into a business setup and it involves confidence and initiative of a business man to come on board.

The core factor as an investor remains the willingness to take first step and undertake new ventures, often high risk investment.

Entrepreneurs are also noted for originality, creativity and innovativeness. They are bold and different from ordinary business dynasties and tycoons. They are constantly thinking forward to solve problems in a society by generating ideas (Akinyanmi, 2013). Other attitude includes passionate with innovations and ideas, full of vision and always in quest for knowledge and skills development. Based on these characteristics, Entrepreneur shapes the combination of art, science, creativity and technology upon which businesses are built and it is the key ingredient in the transformation of changing lives by ideas, an idea can change life by innovating a product or commercialization of technology (Adewoye, 2007).

Technopreneurship goes through an organizational process of creativity, innovation, applying innovative ideas or continually finding end user problems, solving those pain areas and implementing solutions is denoted as Technopreneurship. It lays foundation of integrating technology with entrepreneurship and involvement of technology based businesses by making use of technology to introduce innovative products through the process of commercialization.

Many terminologies related with commercialization of science and technology have been introduced to Higher education institution working culture, including technological entrepreneurship (Venkataraman, 2004).

Objective of Technopreneurship is commercialization of innovations developed by academic scientists by “patenting or licensing or start-up creation” and most importantly university-industry level strategic partnerships (Grimldi et al. 2011).

Subject of commercialization is not only in form of technology, it may be an idea, concept, creative art, expertise among academic services.

Innovation is a link between technology and industry and technology is the applicability of scientific research in the industries. Technology catches its application in industry as an expertise where innovations take shape till new products reach to market. An innovation is the tool by which entrepreneur makes business decisions and forecast business growth (Cukier, 2006).

Role of Higher Education

Opportunity exploited first needs to be created and they must first exist, without opportunities no process can begin. The university as a first step to create and initiate technological opportunities, the knowledge must be revealed to the marketplace.

The creation of Entrepreneurial University should have characteristic of research selection of study with commercializable potential, interface mechanism of active attempts to identify commercializable knowledge, sophisticated structure and staffing of technology person with clear technology transfer supporting policy.

Finally the university provides entrepreneurial spirit by innovative culture that supports commercialization in the mission statement of the university. Research based on commercializing encouragement to faculty that works with industry, networked to external bodies that facilitate knowledge. University acts as an innovation organizer.

An academic entrepreneur university with opportunities to be exploited need a process of receiving notification of a researchers applied science and technology, the technology transfer unit within the department will fulfil the role of interface mechanism from evaluation of the knowledge for its potential commercialization if it is worth patenting (Siegel et al., 2003).

The Technopreneurship interface between an academic entrepreneur university and industries is on full boom when industry directly supports research and development projects, leading possibility of exposing science technological opportunities.

In bioscience research, private funding is common but they also participate in software and engineering as confirmation by results of such companies as Intel, IBM, Hewlett-Packard (Mims, 2011).

Intel, for example, created ‘lablets’ (small different labs) adjacent to universities that were run by researcher from the university, enable Intel to stay up-to-date of new and potentially disruptive technologies (Buderi, 2001).

In order to attempt encourage the commercialization of university applied science and technology projects, university offer entrepreneurship courses.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT, for example, provides practical courses to it students of engineering and technology. In general, entrepreneurship programs have been shown to increase intentions of Technopreneurship in science and engineering students (Fayolle, Gailly, Lassas Clerc, 2006 and Souitaris et al., 2007).

Technopreneur and Economy

Role of Government

Promotion of Technological entrepreneurship should thus be a pivotal concern for policy makers and this is essential for modern governments to facilitate investment is a way forward.

Government’s necessary intervention for encouraging Technopreneurship would emerge as an entitlement mentality if government attempted to provide the intangible infrastructure.

On the other hand marketplaces and privately held institutions have not always solved problems effectively and efficiently, both would fail if worked independently (Venkataraman, 2004). So, government has many possible support roles for Technopreneurship, indirectly by enacting favourable regulations and public policy for creating conducive environment for Technopreneurship and directly by providing risk capitol.

Additionally, the solution laid in the role of regional and national leadership in creating the necessary intangible infrastructure. Such leadership will have to be collaboration among executive leaders from private institutions, universities. Involvement of all development actors of public and private with extensive interventions and exchange of ideas as part of the government agenda for creating Technopreneurship environment in the places like Kashmir might not be practical but would be very effective with strategic approach.

In case of Kashmir, as an example at the current condition, it should be more focused on developing technologies that are relevant to the needs of potential users, economically reliable and competitive. Therefore, technology development at the higher education institutions and research and development institutions should be based on demand based approach.

A skilled workforce is important for innovation but to achieve great height in economy in a place such as Kashmir, electricity should be made available and sustained in all regions of the state to enable end users to use technology widely as a life style.

Government could help small and medium enterprises SME’s seeking to internationalize their business by reducing regulation and licensing, providing tax breaks, improve access to finance, more support, manage foreign exchange rules, promote SME competitiveness, eliminate exploitation.

Funding

Innovative ideas die at the very beginning of discussions and conceptualization due to lack of capitol. At the development stages, the challenge of funding has choked most innovative work. Both, public and private institutions find it tough to invest in breakthrough projects at the early stages.

With all these discouraging reasons around developing communities should be backed up by nation’s leadership in order to save advancement of technology, solution in positive direction in order a nation is not left behind with global business practice.

The process of mainstreaming innovation projects for funding availability would build confidence and positive attitude toward Technopreneurship culture. Developmental financial companies could play an important role on financing technology projects for wide use of consumer based electronics products to increase market base.

Creation of New Technology Based Companies

Technology entrepreneurship is the engine of innovation, skilled based knowledge and culture of the entrepreneurship are the essential resources to create economic growth from commercialization of research leading to technological based companies (Hindle and Yencken, 2004).

Establishing the New Technology Based Firms (NTBF) and managing these establishments requires business management skills for Technopreneurship to make intelligent decisions.

Researcher and academician may not have sufficient skills related to business development and managing firms but if skilled based training like use of business intelligence tools, project management are provided at graduate level courses, it can help entrepreneurship to next level.

Managing a company is an art and science, every piece of information should be carefully articulated in a best common sense level.

Individual-level faces and experience based Technopreneur’s are the most important and vital input for creation of technology based entrepreneur university research projects.

Furthermore, entrepreneurial capacity is derived from interaction between the institutions, organizational culture and external business environment. It must be noted entrepreneur’s own personality and background plays a key role in establishing a business mission and vision.

Conclusion

Technopreneurship aims at producing scientists and engineers who create new products, for innovative industries. These engineers and scientists are productive driven, technologically capable at local and global market, there is no doubt that Technopreneurship must be encouraged and facilitated.

Policy of the higher education and research in developing technologies should be examined at all levels and discussed with industry experts such that industries born be able to create technologies relevant to users’ needs, technically reliable and economically competitive.

Strategy, technology and creativity are the pre-requisite for a technology transfer from project selection to successful deliver which changes the lives of people.

Aijaz A Dagga
Aijaz A Dagga

Aijaz A Dagga is MBA (Technology Management) from University of Phoenix, Arizona USA.

2 COMMENTS

  1. I personally appreciate Kashmir Life for providing great minds work. Aijaz Dagga you have a vision and it must needs attention from Kashmiris in particular, great thoughts and observations !!!! best regards Maira from Srinagar

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