Easing the Way for Campuswide Innovation

• To become hubs of innovation, universities do not need to transform their entire campuses—they can tap into the latent creativity of their communities by making small institutional changes.
• Centers of innovation can facilitate these changes through low-cost activities such as seminars and student competitions. They also can generate revenue through student consulting.
• By establishing dedicated centers, schools can encourage cross-disciplinary collaborations and break down bureaucratic barriers that often hinder innovation in higher education settings. 

 
Innovation has become a buzzword embraced by universities over the last several years—by business schools, in particular. The demand for innovation has become so great that AACSB has made it a central component to the shared philosophy of its membership.

Even from high in the ivory tower, we can see the rapid pace of change in the world around us. We recognize that the adage “adapt or die” applies to business education, just as it does to any other industry. However, innovation remains an ideal that is often difficult to achieve, especially on university campuses. 

Those of us championing innovation in higher education are quickly met with a disheartening reality: Universities are institutionally conservative entities that resist change. Any alteration of their existing processes requires that we follow certain mandated steps in excruciating detail. What’s more, we often find that each of these hurdles is defended by a gatekeeper who can stall or obstruct us.

Whether it’s intentional or not, such bureaucracy naturally begets cultures that cling to the status quo. It can make universities textbook examples of static entities that are resistant to change.

The irony is that innovation is often a goal in higher education. But we can’t have it both ways. To foster dynamic campus environments, academic leaders cannot simply express platitudes calling for innovation. They cannot expect their schools to become innovative spaces if they do not institutionally commit to achieving that objective. 

The good news is that we need not upend the entire ecosystems of our schools to turn them into hubs for innovation. Small institutional changes can unlock large channels of latent creativity. That is our goal for the newly established Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Georgia College & State University (GCSU) in Milledgeville. The mission of the center, managed by GCSU’s J. Whitney Bunting College of Business and Technology, is to maximize the innovative potential and positive societal impact of our campus.  

A Commitment to Innovation

Prior to its opening in 2022, the center had been in the works for about three years—yet another testament to the glacial pace of change in academia. However, that process quickened when, in 2020, the Bunting College of Business and Technology appointed new leadership who made this project a priority. This was due in part to the college’s adoption of innovation and societal impact as central pillars of its strategic plan.

Nicholas Creel, a co-author of this article, was recruited in early 2022 to conduct a feasibility study for the center and was thereafter selected to act as its founding director. The study he wrote helped us develop a clear mission, act on the goals of our college’s new strategic plan, and consider what we could best achieve with our available resources.  

Academic leaders cannot expect their schools to become innovative spaces if they do not institutionally commit to achieving that objective.

We also benefited from the insights of our provost, Costas Spirou, who has written a book on how university-created innovation districts can revitalize their local economies. Such high-level administrative support was instrumental in ensuring that the center would have the necessary resources to succeed.

The center has been guaranteed base funding for its first two years of operation. Additional funding has been guaranteed over its first five years of operation but will taper over time. The goal is for the center to become largely self-funded via revenues from donors and consulting projects.   

The center was run by a single director in its first year, but the Bunting College now plans to appoint a co-director. Under this model, one director will have an internal focus on serving students, and the other will have an external focus on securing consulting contracts and external grants, recruiting a leadership board, and engaging donors.  

All Student Entrepreneurs Welcome

On the student side, the center engages in several activities designed to tap into the latent entrepreneurial talent on our campus. These include:

• A business-builder boot camp that walks students through the process of writing a business plan. Each boot camp is selective, limited to up to 15 students, so that each participant receives individualized feedback and has an enriching experience.  
• A Shark Tank-style pitch competition aimed not at students with market-ready ideas, but at those with early-stage creative ideas with the potential to become profitable enterprises. To incentivize participation, the center offers winners modest financial awards of up to a few hundred dollars. Twelve students competed in our inaugural competition; each gave pitches that lasted 12 to 18 minutes, including time for questions and feedback from judges. In the future, we will likely pre-screen applicants to limit the event to 10 participants, so that we can give participants more time to pitch their ideas, while keeping the event from running too long.

We can’t share details of the pitches students made at our inaugural competition—we required everyone present to sign nondisclosure agreements, so that students did not need to fear others stealing their ideas. However, several of the pitches were astoundingly good, and we expect that some of them will lead to the creation of actual startups. This competition required very few resources to launch, but its outcomes are likely to more than justify its expense.

• The recruitment and sponsorship of teams for external student business competitions, such as the Anderson School of Management’s Global Scaling Competition hosted by the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. In only our first year competing, a team from our center won a bronze medal and 5,000 USD in this international competition, and we plan to seek out many more similar competitions in the years ahead.  

We know that innovation is a process that is only strengthened when we collaborate with other disciplines. That’s why none of these activities are siloed within the business school, and why we deliberately housed the Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship outside of any department. We did not want the center to be subject to departmental turf wars over resources that would make cross-disciplinary engagement difficult, if not impossible.

We promote the center’s activities to faculty across the university. No matter what they teach, these faculty act as recruiters when students share great ideas with them. As a result, the center’s activities span multiple disciplines—more than a third of the students who participate in our events come from outside our college.

Consulting As Long-Term Lifeline

In terms of external outreach, our center works with existing businesses via consulting arrangements. Faculty oversee student interns from across the university, and these students earn both course credits and nominal wages as they take on specific projects and workflows for companies located all over the state.

For example, we recently completed a feasibility study and business plan for an audiobook producer based in Atlanta that was looking to expand into the audiobook sales market. Faculty from several departments—including marketing, communications, accounting, management, and business law—worked with student interns at various points of this challenging process. We are now negotiating with multiple companies in Georgia for future projects, which range from accounting work for a local fire truck manufacturer to a coding project for a mining company.

Campus centers of innovation can ensure that faculty talk to one another across disciplines about how they can work together to prepare students and alumni for a dynamic business environment.

As a university, we have a surplus of talent and subject-matter expertise at our disposal, so we can offer companies high-quality work at below-market rates, giving them access to fresh ideas and perspectives for far less than they would pay off-campus consultants. At the same time, our students learn as much from these consulting projects as they would from traditional internships, if not more. Likewise, our faculty have opportunities to make meaningful contributions to our students’ success and societal impact, which are important considerations for tenure, promotion, and the annual reviews of even senior professors.

Of course, running a successful consulting operation promises to generate significant revenues, which the center will use to support its events and operations. The consulting fees also will allow the center to compensate faculty for their work, incentivizing their participation much like overload contracts. We anticipate this revenue eventually will cover the entire cost of the center’s operation, acting as a long-term lifeline to our institutional commitment to innovation—a must in an era of ever tighter budgets.

Meeting the Innovation Demands of Tomorrow

Innovation is not limited to our impact on the community outside the university. We must also look within to ensure we are designed to meet the demands of tomorrow. As hubs that connect otherwise disjointed campus units, centers of innovation can accomplish this important goal.

One easy way our center acts as a hub of innovation is by hosting seminars on emerging topics and trends. For example, in January, the center hosted a seminar that explored the implications of artificial intelligence on the workforce. At least 50 students, faculty, and staff from across the university attended the seminar, leaving us with standing room only. This response has given us confidence that even a small university such as ours can attract even larger audiences to future events.

Other options we are pursuing are more complex, including the creation of new courses, certificate programs, and minors. We also are looking into offering multiple continuing and professional education certification programs on topics such as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and solar energy entrepreneurship. To create the latter certification, we are working with faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education.  

The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship serves an important purpose on our campus. Because it continually examines the curriculum to identify opportunities for creative collaborations, it ensures faculty talk to one another across disciplines about how they can work together to better prepare our students and alumni for a dynamic business environment.