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Jackson, Mississippi, USA -?Two major forces smoked academics out of their Ivory Tower in the US. The first force was the internet revolution, which academics played a big role in commercializing. Some got burned when the bubble burst, not unexpected in any investment. Contrary to the popular belief, this revolution showed that academics can respond to incentives. The belief that academics are only fascinated by ideas soon found a ready competitor, money and wealth.
X.N. Iraki The next force is biotechnology. This one has not yet played itself out, we are not sure who will be the winners and losers. California, has an idea; as other states dither over [the] ethics of stem cell research, she has already committed three billion dollars into this area of research, deemed to be the next frontier in medicine. Imagine being able to "grow" your own heart instead of waiting for a donor. Even the US House of Representatives and the Senate are rethinking [their approach to biotechnology issues].
The US is not very famous for missing opportunities to make money. Few people in academics or elsewhere can deny that stem cell research is the next long wave. And with Koreans ahead in the cloning game, scientists and entrepreneurs in the USA [are taking notice.]
But there is another area where academics have been flexing their muscles, silently, away from the prickly eyes of the public. It is in the rooms of the boards of directors. A quick sample finds that the boards of Proctor and Gamble and Sprint have a professor from Yale; an MIT professor sits on boards of Citigroup and IBM; Harvard professors sit on the boards of Merck, Intel and Microsoft. Stanford professors sit on the boards of Exxon Mobil and Google. Princeton dons sit on the boards of McDonalds and Merck. The President Emeritus of the University of Michigan sits on the board of Ford Motor Company. A don from Oxford sits on the board of Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC).
In the West, it seems the power of academics has been appreciated, probably because they often come up with tangible ideas through research and development. Their golden era seems to have been ongoing, particularly for those from elite Universities.
Have academics in Kenya been too shy about flexing their muscles in the corporate world? ?Do we still feel getting rich and wealthy is "not academic"?
Incidentally, President Moi appointed a number of academics to either head state corporations or into state corporations' boards. Their record is not easy to judge. We are not sure how much of their clout trickled down to their institutions, how the firms felt their weight -- a good research project for management dons.
It may be a matter of traditions; academics are supposed to search for knowledge and elusive truth. As they do that, other people are searching for money and wealth. In the West, dons long realized that was a myth that held little water, let alone any other liquid. There is money in academics. Academics go to the same supermarket with everyone else and don't pay special prices.
[In the West,] they realized it was more profitable to flirt with the corporate world; that is where money, power, and prestige reside. Dwindling state funding in education meant dons had to be creative. And they realized their skills were needed by the corporate world. Academic entrepreneurship had come of age.
Today, college towns in the US have the lowest unemployment rates because universities and their professors act as stimuli to economic growth with their progressive and vibrant ideas. It is not surprising that California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Stanford are right in the Silicon Valley.
Professors are busy filing patents for their innovations, doing research for corporations; after all, knowledge-production is their business. Registering a firm often bearing your name is considered a badge of honor. Firms sponsor research in universities and benefit from new ideas; everyone is a winner.
What of dons in Kenya? Where did the rain start beating us?
As suggested earlier, our obsession with social sciences did us in. Since independence, most leading Kenyan academics have been social scientists, from public policy analysts to political scientists and historians. Such areas of pursuit are interesting on paper and easily appeal to emotions but when it comes to the real issues like creating wealth, making money, science, engineering and medicine predominate. There are few patents if any in the social sciences. Yet patents are nothing more than legal monopolies that reward your hard thinking with several years of enjoying the fruits of your hard labor.
Creating a shift in Kenyan collective thinking -- from a social science orientation to a real science orientation -- may be one last hurdle in our quest to economic growth and progress. Countries that instituted such a paradigm shift -- like South Korea and the other Asian "tigers" -- are smiling all the way to world markets with their products and services. ?You can export computer scientists to any country, but not political scientists, or poets.
Professors making money in the US, except those who made their way into the board of directors, are those in critical areas such as computer security, Biotechnology, nanotechnology, molecular biology, pharmacy and related areas. Research from such areas is not only in demand but also can command hefty premiums, in the form of royalties or grants.
While selling brief-case political parties has been a very lucrative business in Kenya, in other countries academics have been setting up start-ups in all areas, which they sell to big firms at hefty prices. Big firms know how to kill competition, buy them up; just as KANU (Kenya's former ruling party) did, with Maendeleo ya Wanawake( a women's organization) and other organizations; who said KANU was not foresighted?
One reason why dons are doing so well in the US is because while they have ideas, there are wealthy people who value ideas, who literally hover around campuses waiting for the next great idea to fund. Venture capitalists fund an idea, getting substantial shareholding and profits for taking the risk. They can then exit anytime, with their money, go fund another start up and make more money.
What is missing in Kenya is closing of ranks between the "rich in money" and the "rich in brains." Such a relationship can be very symbiotic and very productive. The Kenyan intellectual property office has patents lying there but the owners have no money to put patents into use. Where are the Kenyan venture capitalists? Kenya definitely has rich people but they need to be convinced that by funding research they will be putting their money into worthy causes. Maybe dons in Kenya need to get into a charm offensive.
Kenyan academics must stop shying away from creating wealth and making money; even the Communist Deng Xiao Ping admitted, "being rich is glorious." We must get out of the Ivory Tower, dirty our hands and make the world feel our presence, shake it out with our ideas. But such ideas must be powerful enough because they have competitors to conventional wisdom and even stereotypes.
We have a weapon we have spent all our lives gathering, ideas. We shall not leave this small planet with these ideas, let us put them into use, and if the ideas are not useful, let us gather new ones; that is what research is all about.
Economists know too well that you are more likely to succeed in a venture if you have a comparative advantage. Dons have the comparative advantage in that they know how to generate, store and disseminate ideas. The only lesson they seem not to have learned in Kenya is how to sell the ideas.
To be fair to dons in Kenya, we do sell ideas, but to the lowest bidders, middle level colleges and sister universities and the government, not to corporations who have the money. Our other weak point is that we have failed to harness the power of synergy, the "hyena strategy". By joining together hyenas can kill any animal, no matter how big. If we could band together, each with his own specialty, we could be felt in the corporate world and -- like hyenas whose collective effort can kill the biggest prey -- we could come out of boardrooms smiling, broadly.
Finally, we must start following the American approach, where dons getting into large corporations, including the government, work there for several years, gain experience, including political experience -- particularly lobbying -- then return or go to academics later in life, with connections and clout.
Academics in US know on which side of their bread is buttered. Not just in terms of the areas [to which] they tailor their research but also in terms of location. For example, as US firms make inroads in China, so are academics; such symbiotic relationship increases chances of success.
We must not just use the Western textbooks; we must also learn their business tricks, their ways of doing things in academics and beyond.
We must stop being too much of gentlemen, there is nothing wrong with pursuing power, wealth and prestige, but we must do so within the constraints of ethics and not lose our noble goal of enlightening the next generation and motivating them to reach higher goals. I feel the era of scholars being "gas stations" for other people is over.
X.N. IRAKI, a Lecturer at University of Nairobi's Faculty of Commerce is a Fulbright Scholar in Mississippi.
© 2005, GENERATOR 21.
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