If universities want to play as participants, not gate-keepers, in our nation’s innovation ecosystem, university administrators need to learn to create a work environment that attracts, motivates and retains high-performing employees. When people talk about issues involved in transforming federally funded university research into products, medicines and companies, little attention is paid to the people who manage the day-to-day operational details. I don’t mean faculty – they’ve got it good: tenure, freedom to set their own agenda, and advancement opportunities galore. No, I mean the administrative staff, the 9-ti-5’ers, the unknown soldiers who spend their days hunkered down on the frontlines of the great divide between the university and the rest of the world.
University staff employees don’t get much recognition. Professional advancement opportunities inside the university’s patent office are limited. If universities want to play effectively in an era of open innovation, they’re going to need to learn to attract, keep and inspire the people most allergic to slow-moving, rule bound, dead-end university staff jobs. The staff members that dream of bigger things and bigger paychecks typically use their tour of duty inside the university to springboard into more lucrative and interesting work somewhere outside the university. Tax attorneys and financial analysts do the same thing, when they spend a year or two working for the IRS or the SEC and then enter private practice. In fact, high staff turn-over has been identified as an organizational barrier to improving the current university technology transfer process (Siegel, Waldman and Link, 2003).
To read the full, original article click on this link: Motivating and retaining innovative employees in a bureaucracy « Triple Helix Innovation
Author: Melba Kurman
