University innovation is a cycle ,not an arrow
大學創新應該是一個循環，而不是一個單向箭頭
子謙譯文
by Sarah Goforth
In my role as an entrepreneurship educator at a research university, I regularly 「hit the streets」 in search of non-business graduate students who are driven to solve problems, commercialize technologies or start new ventures. (The business students tend to find me.)
作為一所研究型大學的教受創業教育的工作者，我經常「上街」尋找那些致力於解決問題、將技術商業化或創辦新企業的非商學院畢業的研究生。(商科學生往往會主動找我。)
In academia, 「publish or perish」 is often viewed as the core mandate and a graduate student’s time is already stretched by the demands of coursework and grant-funded research. And students who want to explore entrepreneurship can feel tension with peers and faculty who believe that business, or anything that looks like it, is a distraction from or a threat to work driven by curiosity and theory.
在學術界，有一種說法叫「要麼論文要麼完蛋」，它通常被視為核心任務；而研究生的時間已經被課程作業和資助研究的要求所佔用。想要探索創業精神的學生可能會感受到與同齡人和教師之間的緊張關係，因為他們認為，任何商業或類似的東西，會分散或威脅到由好奇心和理論所驅動的工作。
As one molecular biology graduate student noted after a workshop I led for her department, 「I associate the word 『entrepreneurship』 with greed and capitalism. I was skeptical of everything you were saying as a result.」
正如一名分子生物學研究生在我為她的部門主持的研討會之後所說的那樣，「我把『創業精神』這個詞與貪婪和資本主義聯繫在一起。」結果，我對你說的每一句話都持懷疑態度。」
I hope I was successful in broadening her view of the term, but my goal was not to change her mind about her career as a basic researcher. Far from it. Without the patient pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, what ground would entrepreneurs – particularly those working in deep tech fields such as drug development, clean energy, biotech and materials – have to build on?
我希望我成功地拓寬了她對這一術語的理解，但我的目標並不是要改變她作為一名基礎研究人員的想法，且遠非如此。如果不是為了知識本身而耐心地追求知識，那些創業者們——尤其是在藥物研發、清潔能源、生物技術和材料等深度技術領域工作的人——還能有什麼立足之地呢?
Universities, and for the most part only universities, create a virtuous cycle between fundamental discovery and entrepreneurship. This culture, the blending of explorers and changemakers, is inextricable, or at least it should be. And, the evidence shows, it is most productive when people on both sides of the equation are celebrated and supported.
大學，大部分也只有大學，在基礎探索和創業領域之間創造了一個良性循環。這種融合了探索者和變革者的文化是不可分割的，至少也應該如此。而且，有證據表明，當等式兩邊的人都得到讚揚和支持時，它的效率才是最高的。
At the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Arkansas, we discuss these cultural conditions every day. When the COVID-19 crisis hit, and many graduate students became unable to access their labs or field sites, we created an Innovation Scholars program to help them learn the principles of commercialization and entrepreneurship from home.
在阿肯色大學的創業與創新辦公室，我們每天都在討論這些文化條件。當COVID-19危機爆發時，許多研究生無法進入實驗室或現場，因此我們創建了一個創新學者項目，旨在幫助他們在家學習商業化和創業精神的原理。
They are working on new forms of robotics, next-generation genome sequencing, algorithms that help detect disease, friction-reducing surface materials and other technologies that in most cases are still many years away from any practical application. But understanding the problems their research might solve and the market opportunities associated with those problems, gives them new ideas for their research and opens up career paths.
比如，正在研發的新形式的機器人、下一代基因組測序、幫助檢測疾病的算法、減少表面摩擦的材料以及其他技術，雖然這些技術在大多數情況下仍需多年才能得到實際應用。但是，了解他們的研究可能解決的問題，以及與這些問題相關的市場機會，可以為他們的研究提供了新思路，並開闢新的職業道路。
Our experience working with these Innovation Scholars and hundreds of other entrepreneurial students over the past two years, has yielded three key lessons:
在過去的兩年裡，我們和這些創新學者以及數百名創業學生一起工作，從得到的經驗中總結了三個關鍵的教訓：
1
Entrepreneurship-friendly research environments are good for everyone
創業友好的研究環境對每個人都有好處
Consider this study by the researcher Michael Roach at Cornell University. Roach found that STEM labs in which a principal investigator sets a supportive tone, encouraging graduate students to pursue any interest they have in entrepreneurship, are just as productive from a research point of view as labs that discourage entrepreneurship.
看看康奈爾大學的研究員麥可·羅奇（Michael Roach）的研究。羅奇發現，從研究的角度來看，由首席研究員設定支持基調、鼓勵研究生追求他們對創業的任何興趣的STEM實驗室，與那些不鼓勵創業的實驗室一樣多產。
The STEM Labs is a creative environment where students can explore and develop their interests in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Children are challenged with fun and engaging hands-on active learning experiences and encouraged to build teamwork and leadership skills. Students engage directly with professionals in the STEM fields to understand technical applications and to explore exciting career opportunities. We hope that this innovative approach to education provides stimulating academic enrichment for children and quality-care opportunities for parents.
STEM實驗室是一個創造性的環境，學生可以在這裡探索和發展他們在科學、技術、工程學和數學等領域的興趣。孩子們享受挑戰與樂趣並主動參與學習體驗，鼓勵團隊合作和發展領導技能。學生可以直接與STEM領域內的專業人士接觸，以理解技術應用並探索令人興奮的職業機會。我們希望這種創新的教育方式能夠為孩子提供豐富的學術知識，為家長提供優質的護理機會。
An added benefit is that students in the entrepreneurship-friendly environments are much more likely to succeed when they develop technologies and decide to bring them to market. Finally, as others have pointed out, commercialized technologies also bring new tools, questions and funding back to the fundamental research environment.
另一個好處是，當學生們在創業友好的環境中開發技術並決定將其推向市場時，他們更有可能取得成功。還有，正如其他人所指出的，商業化技術也給基礎研究環境帶來了新的工具、問題和資金。
2
The ability to think like an entrepreneur boosts careers in academia and industry
像創業者一樣思考的能力可以加強在學術界和產業界的職業發展
Entrepreneurial skills can help someone start a company or a nonprofit venture. The tools required to start something new are also important for anyone who wants to help existing organizations develop new products or services, or be more sustainable, or solve important problems.
創業技能也可以幫助人們創辦公司或非盈利企業。對於任何希望幫助當前的公司開發新產品或服務、提高可持續性或解決重要問題的人來說，開發新事物所需的工具也很重要。
Take healthcare. Dr. Neel Shah, an obstetrician-gynecologist and Harvard professor, spoke to a group of students – nursing, business, engineering and others – at the Brewer Family Entrepreneurship Hub last spring. He relayed the story of public health workers who have battled HIV and tuberculosis in African communities. Traditional approaches – boosting the number of clinics and healthcare providers, marketing campaigns – were expensive and didn’t seem to work.
以醫療保健為例。哈佛大學的尼爾·沙阿（ Dr. Neel Shah）博士，同時也是一位婦產科醫生。去年春天，他在布魯爾家庭創業中心對一群包括護理、商學、工程學和其他專業的學生發表了一次演講，講述的是在非洲地區與愛滋病毒和結核病作鬥爭的公共衛生工作者的故事。他提到，這些傳統的方法，比如增加診所和提高醫療保健者的數量，開展營銷活動等方法，都很昂貴，而且似乎也不起作用。
An inventive person who had spent time talking with people in the affected communities decided to try a simpler but unconventional approach: paying an ill person’s neighbor to check in and observe that person taking medication on schedule. No technology was involved in this approach, which is now standard practice and bears the label 「directly observed care.」 It was the pattern of thinking that led to this life-saving idea – starting with a problem, exploring it from a human perspective, trying simple experiments before spending a lot of time and money to build finished products – that mattered.
後來，一個富有創造力的人花時間和受影響地區的人們交談之後，決定嘗試一個更簡單但非常規的方法：付錢給病人的鄰居，讓他們檢查並觀察病人是否按時服藥。雖然這種方法不涉及任何技術，但它現在已經成了標準做法，並帶有「直接觀察護理」的標籤。正是這種思維模式導致了這種拯救生命的想法——以問題為導向，站在當事人的角度思考問題，並在花費大量時間和金錢生產之前嘗試簡單的實驗——這才是重要的。
「Most problems, most people accept,」 Shah said. 「Entrepreneurship 101 is deciding you don’t want to do that.」 When this light turns on for a student, it never turns off.
沙阿說：「創業教育101的原則之一就是，即使大多數人都接受的事情，也不一定是對的。」只要還有一個學生需要燈光照明，就請不要關掉它。
3
Being part of an entrepreneurial team develops essential boundary-spanning skills
成為創業團隊的一員可以培養必要的跨界技能
We often interview and survey students and alumni who participate in entrepreneurship training offered by our office and through the curriculum of the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. These experiences have helped them create and build new ventures, for sure, but another theme consistently stands out: Entrepreneurship training, they tell us, made them better communicators. This is not about pitching for cash, Shark Tank-style, but about interdisciplinarity. Founding teams often have a good technical lead, a business lead and someone who is a great marketer or project manager. Their differences allow them to be wildly inventive and productive at the same time, so our programs insist, by design, on including many different disciplines.
我們經常對參加我們辦公室提供的創業培訓以及參加阿肯色大學山姆·沃爾頓商學院課程的學生和校友進行採訪和調查。當然，這些經歷幫助他們創建了新的企業，但同時也讓另一個主題脫穎而出。他們告訴我們，創業教育培訓讓他們成為更好的溝通者。它不是像《鯊魚坦克》那樣去爭取現金，而是跨學科整合資源。創始團隊通常都有一個優秀的技術領導、業務領導和出色的市場營銷人員或項目經理，而他們之間的差異可以使他們同時具有極大的創造力和生產力，因此我們始終堅持在多學科的基礎上保持差異化的設計。
Developing an ability to translate between business and science, or between design and technology, or between molecular biology and biochemistry for that matter, is game-changing for students. The creative possibilities at the boundaries between disciplines allows fresh approaches to problems, can give rise to integrative research questions that people deeply embedded in their disciplines do not see, and benefit any career.
培養學生在商業與科學，或者設計與技術，或者分子生物學與生物化學之間進行轉換的能力，對他們來說是一種類似於改變遊戲規則的能力。不同學科之間創造的可能性允許用新的方法來解決問題，從而可以整合研究那些深嵌在他們的學科裡的人看不到的，但是對任何職業都有好處的問題。
It is no wonder that at the University of Arkansas, growing research productivity has coincided with a growing number of invention disclosures and technology-based ventures. But the development of a culture that embraces and supports entrepreneurship and commercialization has taken more than a decade, with plenty of room to grow.
難怪在阿肯色大學，研究生產效率的提高與越來越多的基於技術的發明披露同時出現。雖然這種擁抱和支持創業教育和商業化的文化氛圍已經持續了十多年，但是它還有很大的發展空間。
The day after meeting the biologists, I spoke to three students pursuing graduate degrees in space and planetary science. Students in this program at the University of Arkansas pursue the most exquisite interdisciplinary research questions you can imagine – probing conditions on Mars and the moons of Saturn, exploring the birth and evolution of galaxies, building the tools and technologies that propel next-generation spacecraft and so much more – and many of them go on to careers with NASA.
在會見一位生物學家之後的第二天，我與三位正在攻讀太空和行星科學研究專業的學生進行了交談。你很難想像，在這所大學的這個專業中，學生是怎樣追求最精緻的跨學科研究的——探索火星和土星的衛星的環境，探索星系的誕生和發展，搭建推動下一代太空飛行器的工具和技術等等一些列問題。他們中的許多人把一生都獻給了美國航空航天局(NASA)。
After my talk on how to become a problem-seeker, my colleague and friend Larry Roe, who is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences, asked me if I thought all science needed to start with a problem.I do not.
在我講完「如何成為一個問題導向者」的演講之後，我的同事兼好友拉裡羅伊（Larry Roe）—機械工程系教授，同時也是阿肯色州的空間和行星科學中心主任—問我是否認為所有的科學需要以問題為導？我的回答是否定的。
The world badly needs people who are driven by questions, regardless of whether the answers will be useful to anyone. This freedom to advance knowledge in fundamental ways is the most important human endeavor because it is the foundation our future and our planet’s future stands on.
這個世界非常需要那些被問題所驅使的人，不管這些答案是否對所有人有用。這種以最原始的方式增進知識的自由是人類最重要的行為，因為它是我們的未來和我們立足這個星球的基礎。
But the beauty and the richness of a university environment is that people who are driven by questions and ideas work side by side with people who are focused on problems, or jobs, or developing the regional economy, and many other things. All of our students deserve an opportunity to scholars and entrepreneurs，explorers and changemakers, and the evidence shows that this is not only possible, but good for everyone.
但是大學環境的美麗和富有在於那些被問題和想法驅動的人們，以及那些關注問題、工作、發展地區經濟和其他事情的並一起努力工作的人們。我們所有的學生都應該獲得成為一名學者、創業者、探險家和變革者的機會。證據表明，這不僅是可能的，而且是對每個人都有好處的。
Sarah Goforth is executive director of the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and adjunct professor at the Sam M. Walton College of Business. An experienced entrepreneurship educator and former communications executive, she trains student-entrepreneurs and oversees innovation and entrepreneurship programs for students, faculty and alumni of the University of Arkansas. She teaches the university’s graduate-level New Venture Development course sequence and has served as an instructor and mentor in multiple entrepreneurship programs across the state (including NSF I-Corps, I-Fund and UAMS Health Sciences Entrepreneurship Bootcamp).
莎拉·戈福斯 （Sarah Goforth）是創業與創新辦公室的執行主任，同時也是山姆·沃爾頓（Sam M. Walton）商學院的副教授。她是一位經驗豐富的創業教育家。她負責學生創業的培訓工作，和阿肯色州立大學的學生、教師和校友的創新和創業項目。她教受研究生層次的新風險開發的系列課程，並在全國多個創業項目(包括NSF I-Corps、I-Fund和UAMS健康科學創業訓練營)擔任指導員和導師。
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