Here’s what we know about university-startup partnerships

GLOBAL

All too often universities and companies worldwide are missing a readily available opportunity to educate and train the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders. I refer here to partnerships between academia and the startup community. Such collaborations, once established and properly maintained, often grow into mutually beneficial propositions.

We’ve experienced this first-hand at Lehigh University. Through our eight-year exclusive partnership with the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, we discovered how bringing together higher education with the entrepreneurial community accelerates the development of talent and equips enterprising students to participate in – and lead – the global economy now emerging.

Right now, especially given the political sensitivities at play, universities and startups have a unique opportunity to foster the kind of global collaboration that can bring countries together.

But will higher education institutions take advantage of the ever-expanding opportunity to join the startup ecosystem, and in so doing, benefit all those students now hungry to develop an entrepreneurial mindset? And will ventures team up with universities to leverage their intellectual capital – the talent, the new knowledge created and the technological innovation – essential to advancing the global economy?

Modelling innovation

Our university’s partnership can be taken as a case in point. Lehigh@NasdaqCenter (LNC) was established in 2017 as an exclusive education-industry collaboration between Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center in San Francisco – in the heart of Silicon Valley. As such, the LNC can serve as a model for other universities to emulate in partnering with the global startup community.

Consider our track record. Since 2017, more than 1,600 students across 78 disciplines have participated in LNC programmes, courses and workshops, including – most significantly – internships with more than 150 startups not only in Silicon Valley but also in countries all around the globe.

And that’s only what happens before those students even graduate. As our most recent impact report reveals, LNC alumni earn an average current salary of US$119,000 a year and require only 1.4 years to be promoted, about half as long as the national average. Equally impressive, dozens of our graduates have landed jobs with some of the world’s most successful tech and consulting firms – from Meta, Netflix and Salesforce to Accenture, Cisco and Google – with 45% assuming leadership roles.

Our partnership has also created new knowledge about entrepreneurship education and practice. Our research, translated into actionable insights, has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Fast Company, among other publications. So here’s the big question. How can universities and the startup community best work together to benefit the entrepreneurs of today and also educate the entrepreneurs of tomorrow?

What we know and how we know it

Here, courtesy of our fruitful eight-year collaboration, are the three key lessons we’ve learned – in short, what we know, and, just as crucial, how we know it:

• Develop internships with startups. Every year Lehigh students from all backgrounds and disciplines have devoted themselves to both part- and full-time internships with startups that are located around the world. Internships create entry points to opportunities in the startup ecosystem that are otherwise unavailable or difficult to come by and thus remove barriers to access to mentors, networks, expertise and jobs.

In the best scenarios, interns at startups tackle real-life challenges in real-life environments, gaining real-life experience with real-life advantages. They participate in – and directly contribute to – day-to-day business functions rather than merely listening to and observing more experienced employees in action. They help startups identify new growth markets, develop products, acquire customers, raise venture capital funding and refine scalable business models.

The upshot is that students learn things they can learn nowhere else and get to show what they can do outside a classroom. They can develop an entrepreneurial mindset and gain a feel for the dynamics of the workplace and pick up what working in a given organisation might be like if they’re hired. And at the same time, startups get access to new ideas and an opportunity to connect with a potential future employee. It’s a win for all involved.

• Establish, and abide by, the premise that anyone can be an entrepreneur (or at least entrepreneurial). An entrepreneurial mindset is applicable to any workplace setting and is equally valuable whether you’re an executive in a corporate environment, the founder of a startup or a non-profit leader.

Our research, published in the Journal of Entrepreneurship Education, identified 11 critical dimensions of an entrepreneurial mindset, including competencies such as problem-solving, identifying opportunities, taking risks and creating value. Likewise, we’ve found that anyone – regardless of background or discipline – can develop the skills necessary to become an entrepreneurial leader.

More companies than ever expect – and even demand – that employees adopt an entrepreneurial mindset. A close look at current job descriptions reflects this trend: about half of all ads for jobs emphasise that applicants demonstrate an entrepreneurial mindset. The pandemic likely intensified this trend.

• Leverage the partnership to create synergies. Academia and industry each play an important role in creating a multidisciplinary experience. Higher education institutions combine a culture that is conducive to developing entrepreneurial talent through access to faculty expertise, mentorship and alumni networks, among numerous other benefits.

Companies bring real-world knowledge, hands-on learning experiences for students and opportunities for applied research and development. To ensure success, a company should connect the dots between the work its interns will do and its own mission. Students will benefit from understanding how the projects they undertake – and the results they deliver – will contribute value towards making an impact.

There are other vital steps to take too, such as finding a partner who is aligned with your mission and values, designing a partnership that will be mutually beneficial and operating and building it and maximising its potential.

Partnerships are powerful, especially if properly harnessed and unleashed. Ours has succeeded because both partners embraced the same credo, the same ethos, the same fundamental principles of entrepreneurship education, starting with the foundational importance of developing an entrepreneurial mindset for all.

As the historic LNC partnership comes to a close this month, we wish to express our gratitude and appreciation for a symbiotic rapport that has flourished, academically and professionally, from first to last.

But now, owing to this eight-year engagement, Lehigh University is poised to take on new challenges and more promising opportunities. Above all, we recognised early on, and believe more strongly now, that if a student plans to answer a calling as an entrepreneur, one of the best places to experience entrepreneurship (but by no means the only place) is Silicon Valley.

It’s where approximately one in every five startups in the United States came into being, and its matrix of venture capital firms, tech giants and proximity to talent and research institutions is unmatched.

As for what comes next for us, we will be proceeding uninterrupted. We will not only maintain our current presence in Silicon Valley but also enhance our programming in the region and across the country, including at our home campus in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.

Through the alchemy of the right partnership and expanding our global footprint, our institution is meeting its mandate to create the risk-takers and change-makers of tomorrow. We invite others to do the same.

Samantha Dewalt is managing director of Lehigh@NasdaqCenter, USA. She has contributed research articles to Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Fast Company, among other publications.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.