An organization is built as per the vision of the founders.
Waterloo is excellent example of why it has become the most innovative school of engineering in Canada. The very first sentence about Waterloo on it's website reads, "Since it was launched in 1957 by a group of industrialists with a dream of changing the world through innovation and research, Waterloo has become an internationally recognized leader in entrepreneurship and innovation."
The founders of Waterloo were successful entrepreneurs, who had built their fortunes during the great American industrial revolution and had very clear vision of building a school for creating innovations, build new enterprises which should result into local economic development. If some students get university degrees in the process of this entrepreneurship development then that is just a byproduct.
As against this, what was the vision of founders of our engineering colleges in India? Before independence, the engineering colleges were started to meet the maintenance requirements of the machinery being imported by the British for military or civil administration. One of the first 2 engineering colleges in India, College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) was started and headed by a British engineer, to train Indians for maintaining the first railway line started between Mumbai (Bombay) and Pune (Poona). All the brand new inventions of machinery and railway engines were imported from Britain. What British wanted from Indian engineers was Civil engineers to repair tracks and mechanical engineers to repair railway engines and other machinery like signals etc.
After independence, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, set up few IITs with the vision of national industrial development. A very small number of engineers got the benefit of more forward looking education. IITs did deliver some entrepreneurial talent to India but it can be debated whether it was far less than what should have been delivered.
The third major proliferation of private engineering colleges has occurred during the past 2 or 3 decades, which is with a vision of pure profits by meeting the huge unsatisfied demand for engineering degrees to the large number of new graduates coming out of high schools. The founders of these colleges are politicians, businesses, feudal landlords but very rarely some entrepreneurs who have innovated new technological products.
The government control through AICTE has further taken out any entrepreneurial vision from the colleges.
If we want to bring about change, the start will have to be from the VISION. We need to ask some very basic questions like,
- Does the college vision statement have any word with the meaning of innovation or entrepreneurship?
- What percentage of founder members were entrepreneurs of inventor with some patents to their credit?
- How many governing board members are successful entrepreneurs?
- What percentage of faculty members are practicing industry technologists or entrepreneurs or have previous industry experience before joining as faculty member?
- Does the mission statement include any goals which measure the successful start ups or entrepreneurs?
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