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The Scholar‐Entrepreneurial Organization: Lessons in Building an Academic Startup
Arvid Bell
How can academia and entrepreneurship thrive together? Discover the story of the Negotiation Task Force, a pioneering academic startup, and the lessons it offers for building self-sustaining scholar-entrepreneurial ventures.
At the intersection of business and academia lies an opportunity for scholar‐entrepreneurship. Unlike full‐time scholars and private sector entrepreneurs, “scholar‐entrepreneurs” operate within the academy to further research and teaching as well as innovative, revenue‐generating projects. The goals and focuses of scholar‐entrepreneurs range in scope, but on the whole, these individuals work to grow their programs and attain sufficient autonomy with consideration for the constraints of the university setting.
We begin with a review of the literature on principled negotiation and then move into the scholar‐entrepreneurship literature to develop three “friction points” that a scholar‐entrepreneurial organization (SEO) is likely to face. Next, we explain the case of the Negotiation Task Force (NTF), an SEO hosted at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Because most scholars are not entrepreneurs, the success of the NTF as a pioneering SEO presents an interesting case from which relevant lessons can be drawn. Through a case study, we cover the progression of the NTF from the initial SEO negotiations and agreement through its development toward self‐sustainability. We then identify how well the friction points describe the core challenges encountered during the NTF’s growth.