Does the University of Virginia have what it takes to become an engine of technological innovation and entrepreneurial wealth creation? Mike Lenox, professor of entrepreneurship at the Darden School of Business, thinks that it does. James Murray, a venture capitalist specializing in telecommunications and information technology, isn’t so sure. They engaged in one of the more spirited, if all too brief, debates in a Board of Visitors meeting in recent memory.
Lenox was invited to the Board Thursday to present the University’s Pan-University Entrepreneurship Initiative. While it is unrealistic to think that UVA could duplicate the success of a Berkeley or a Stanford in Silicon Valley, he said, it is reasonable to aspire to become a second-tier innovation center on the scale of a Boulder, Colorado (home to the University of Colorado.)
UVA and Charlottesville have developed a respectable innovation ecosystem, said Lenox. UVA alumni have created three billion-dollar “exits,” or business cash-outs, including Lending Tree and, most recently, Reddit. The talent exists. But would-be entrepreneurs need more support — some of which UVA can provide.
“We’ve been on this journey for 25 years,” Lenox said. Perhaps most significantly, UVA has “reimagined” its patent-licensing policies to give innovators greater incentive to transform their research into commercial enterprises. But he conceded that students and faculty with great ideas don’t know where to find the expertise to help them get off the ground. He laid out a schema for improving communications between existing centers like the Galant Center, the Batten Center, and the Manning Center, creating an entrepreneur “clubhouse” where students can connect, setting up a solutions lab, erecting a solutions building, and — admittedly still in the concept stage — forging relationships beyond Charlottesville through a Commonwealth Partnerships initiative.
Murray, a former rector and a zealous guardian of the university purse, was skeptical. “Government money can’t create good entrepreneurs any more than it can create good artists or musicians,” he said. UVA has yet to demonstrate that it can produce intellectual property that returns money to the institution. Entrepreneurship, he contended, arises from a culture of innovation and risk-taking that does not exist at UVA. People are inspired to become entrepreneurs when they see other people making money, and that’s just not happening now.
“We can expose people to entrepreneurship but we can’t teach the spark of greatness,” he said. Such a spark is unlikely to come out of the academy, he added.
While acknowledging the need for entrepreneurial inspiration, Lenox suggested that many entrepreneurial skills can be taught. There is a popular idea that entrepreneurs are big risk-takers, he said. It’s better to see them as superior appraisers of risk. Risk management, he suggested, can be taught.
Lenox argued that one of UVA’s greatest assets is its alumni base. “This university has created trillions of dollars of value through the alumni,” he said.
Paul Manning, a successful entrepreneur and investor who donated $100 million to launch a new biotech center at UVA, staked out a middle ground. Entrepreneurs need funding. Although Charlottesville is gaining recognition as a growing center of venture deals, the network of entrepreneurial capital is not well developed.
Craig Kent, CEO of UVA Health, added another wrinkle. It might be able to create an entrepreneurial culture if UVA was able to recruit more individuals with an “entrepreneurial mindset.” Manning and his biotech center “will be able to do that,” he suggested.
Shortly before Lenox made his presentation, the Board heard from two medical research scientists, one of whom the University had recruited from Northwestern University and another of whom it had enticed to stay at UVA.
Evan Scott, coming from Northwestern, is a leader in investigating inflammatory and immunological processes with the goal of designing delivery systems that target key inflammatory cell populations. John Luken, who earned his PhD at UVA and has worked here ever since, studies how the immune system contributes to degenerative neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, and ALS. Both men and their research teams will be located in the state-of-the-art, Manning-funded biotech facility.
UVA has demonstrated an ability to recruit star researchers, as evidenced by its climb in the rankings of research universities over the past decade. But conducting foundational research is not the same as commercializing successful products, which requires very different skills. If UVA can crack the entrepreneurial code, it can create a lot of wealth for itself, the Charlottesville region, and Virginia. If it can’t, it will spend a lot of money chasing its own tail.