GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

In high schools across the U.S., a quiet movement is underway to better prepare students for a hazy new future of work in which graduates will vie for fast-changing jobs being transformed by increasingly capable machines.

Many universities are calling themselves “entrepreneurial”. Most, however, are just putting old wine in a new bottle. For them, the goal is to graduate students who can create a viable and sustainable business.

Very few medical and graduate schools could be considered entrepreneurial.

Some, like Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, my alma mater, have created “tracks” and putting a toe in the business of medicine.

Here is an update on medical schools teaching innovation and entrepreneurship.

Creating a diverse talent pipeline from high school to graduate school of graduates with an entrepreneurial mindset is a key pillar of transforming sick care to healthcare and delivering value. Others are 1)changing the toxic culture of innovation, 2) eliminating the barriers to open innovation with BIG PHARMA, BIG DEVICE and BIG DIGITAL, 3) changing the behavior of doctors and patients, and 4)creating an evolving cyber nervous system to respond to environmental change and coordinate information.

Creating a business is but one way to deliver user defined value and limits the scope of entrepreneurial education and training. For medical schools and graduate training programs, the goal should be to graduate students with an entrepreneurial mindset who can create user-defined value in whatever form they decide to do it, including starting or running a business with a viable business model. It could be a process innovation. It could be a user-experience innovation. It could be an analytics tool that substantially lowers cost and improves outcomes.

AI and robotics are changing how work gets done and who does it, including doctors. One author notes that “as machines do more of what was once human, companies and people who thrive will not be those who guess correctly at the next narrow skillsets, but who cultivate the capacity of their workers to learn faster. This is true both for “on balance sheet” workers and the gig economy. As the half-life of specific skills diminishes, and machines become proficient at tasks including even decision-making, then fundamentally human capabilities become more important: empathy, curiosity, creativity, imagination, emotional and social intelligence, leadership, and the development of other people.” In other words, doctors will have to have an entrepreneurial mindset to thrive.

For most academic medical centers, innovation is described and measured by technology transfer metrics, like patents, licensing revenues and spin outs. Unfortunately, innovative universities described in these terms are not necessarily entrepreneurial universities. Some are beginning to realize that and are rethinking how they do the business of science and medicine.

University of Michigan researchers interviewed and surveyed representatives at 59 Innovation and Economic Prosperity Universities, as designated by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and together they identified the following best practices for technology commercialization:

• A university with a strong cultural emphasis on innovation has leadership that promotes its value both internally to the university and its faculty, as well as externally to the surrounding community.
• Strong technology ecosystems are dependent upon champions—experienced professionals with industry and commercialization backgrounds—assisting in the maturation of a technology through expert guidance and mentorship.
• Research career incentives are vital to motivate and reward new ideas, while resources provide the necessary environment for continued growth.
• Cross-organization collaborations are necessary throughout the process to foster ideas and improve outcomes.

Here is why it is so hard to create entrepreneurial medical schools and find leaders for them.

Entrepreneurial universities have several key features: (i) top-down vision, strategy and leadership, (ii) clearly defined entrepreneurship learning objectives that drive the curriculum, (iii) robust internal and external networks, (iv) a culture of innovation, and (v) experiential learning and knowledge transfer opportunities.

Here are 10 things universities should do to transform themselves:

1. Fix their technology transfer offices or outsource the function.

2. Give faculty promotion and tenure recognition for innovative and entrepreneurial accomplishments.

3. Eliminate practice plan taxes and policies that discourage faculty-industry collaboration.

4. Create an internal seed stage fund.

5. Hold every student accountable for demonstrating an entrepreneurial mindset.

6. Hire, develop, and promote for innovation.

7. Lead innovators, don’t manage innovation

8. Celebrate innovation champions and mentor those who are interested in emulating them.

9. Transform donations into investments

10. Hire outsiders who think convergently

11. Streamline academic-industry collaborations.

In addition, medical students should be treated and tracked like customers, measuring their net promoter score during and at the completion of their education and training.

Medical educators are grappling with how to create the 21st Century workforce. To ensure that physicians-in-training around the world get the education they need to provide the best care for patients, the World Medical Association is calling on national medical associations to encourage medical schools to develop quality assurance programs and support accreditation systems that set medical education standards that align with the needs of patients.

Entrepreneurial universities and medical schools should not just be about graduating students who will create businesses. Instead, every graduate should be trained to create user defined value. After all, that’s how they are, more and more, being paid. More importantly, being an entrepreneur makes you a better doctor and patients benefit. Also, supporting faculty entrepreneurs might increase industry support for research, development and commercialization. Where are you on this list of percentage of industry supported academic research?

Companies and universities are slowly learning how to play nice with each other. However, before there can be significant rapprochement, we need to create entrepreneurial medical and graduate schools.

The fact that doctors don’t know how to deliver value is part of the reason it is so hard to kill fee for service medicine. Instead an entrepreneurial society should create entrepreneurial universities that create entrepreneurial medical schools. To do that they need means, motive and opportunity.

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