POSSIBLE APPROACHES TO COMMERCIALISABLE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH IN KENYA

Abstract

Serving society has become a coherent mission of universities besides the traditional missions of education and research. This involves linking teaching, research and commercialization of research to create an entrepreneurial university. The aim is to make universities major contributors to economic transformation and development of society via research-based entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, the idea of an entrepreneurial university is yet to take off in Kenya. This paper aims to propose some approaches which can be adapted to make university research in Kenya commercialisable. A systematic literature survey found that approaches to commercialisable university research lie between a wider view to university as a creator of intellectual and social capital for and in society and a narrower view to university as optimizing commercialisation of research as fund-raising function. This paper discusses four approaches: -  National Project Approach (NPA); Community-University Cooperation Approach (CUCA); Industry-University Cooperation Approach (IUCA) and University Spin-Off Approach (USOA). NPA is based on  University-Industry-Government (UIG) triple helix relationship with the government being the principle agent (PA) directing and facilitating university research and research-based entrepreneurship. IUCA is a double helix relationship with industry as the  PA facilitating research geared towards innovation or invention in universities. In CUCA the university is the PA identifying community needs and facilitating science/technology based entrepreneurship to meet those needs. In USOA, universities support staff and graduates to engage in commercialisable high end advanced science/technology research to project an image and cut a niche for themselves. In conclusion, adapting any one of these approaches will ensure strategic, systematic and focused university research geared towards generating sustainable startups, ventures, patents or science/technology based MSMEs. This will make Kenyan universities get actively involved in the second academic revolution and positively contribute towards knowledge based economic development, vision 2030 and improved well-being of the people of Kenya.