14 statements for more impact with academic startups

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Sign the statements via LinkedIn

Entrepreneurial scientists

Science is a tremendous source and accelerator of solutions to the world's challenges. Academic startups take a key position here because ambitious entrepreneurship helps break paradigms and accelerate change.

The 'entrepreneurial scientist' has many different faces. For instance, there are scientists who have founded one or more startups, but also scientists who support colleagues with entrepreneurial ambitions, or make their knowledge accessible to a non-academic audience and make impact in this way.

Entrepreneurial scientists often have an independent, sometimes even lonely position in their knowledge institution. Especially for young entrepreneurial scientists, it is a challenge to combine their research with entrepreneurship. The community of entrepreneurial scientists that is now forming, is therefore important for them. In this way, scientists with an entrepreneurial profile become increasingly visible and can be better supported.

Maximising impact means scaling

The entrepreneurial scientists speaking out today consider creating and scaling startups as an important pathway to making scientific impact. However, they observe that this pathway is has room for improvement. Therefore, they have drafted 14 statements that should serve as a starting point for building an increasingly well-functioning academic support system for startups.

The statements emphasise the need to scale to get maximum impact from academic startups. Recognising and valuing entrepreneurial scientists and the involvement of experienced entrepreneurs and professional support are important conditions to this end. A fertile environment for the scientist requires the government and institutions to consider encouraging entrepreneurship and startup support as investments in economy and society; with the wrong incentives, startups will not achieve their maximum impact.

Open to participate

The entrepreneurial scientists speak out that they are keen to share their practical experience to a continued strengthening of the ecosystem for scientific startups - for example, by further improving deal terms between startups and knowledge institutions. Many scientists were already doing so on an individual basis; with a national community, they aim for the voice of the entrepreneurial scientist to be heard more clearly.

The initiators are inviting fellow scientists with the same impact drives to join this community as well. You can do so by approaching scientists directly via LinkedIN or via the address startup.scientists@science-to-impact.nl.

Also read

The two-part series ‘Denkers die Doen’ with the experience stories of 14 entrepreneurial scientists published by Techleap.nl