For the past several months, I’ve met with academics from universities all over the island. The chat I had was insightful and somewhat clarifying a theory I have had bouncing in my mind since last year about how universities have a big role in shaping Silicon Valley to become how it is today and of course how it’s related to Indonesian universities.
Silicon Valley’s history cannot be separated from universities surrounding the area, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, etc. If you look at these universities, they aren’t just contributing through education and human resources, but rather to the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation, the very soul of Silicon Valley.
These universities give lots of culture seed of the early Silicon Valley, I think what they did significantly was transferring technology created in campus labs to companies/industry. The skill and knowledge were transfered primarily through existing firms that took licenses, or through companies founded by students, staff and faculty. Other alternative was primary contribution through education of engineering and business students to continuously replenish intellectual pool.
From here, you can see these fairly essential factor on what university can give in order to grow “Silicon Valley” :
- Producing talents and hard-skill for engineering (product, business, marketing, etc)
- Do market research and analysis as a part of study in research labs
- Provide reward on innovation and entrepreneurship
- Creating the perfect environment to grow, incubate students and give easy access to basic technology
- Give access to a later-stage incubator, investors or direct access to the industry
In Indonesia, now is the moment for universities to step up and do more contribution to the industry in order to fill in the huge gap between curriculum standard and the industry requirements. For now, I think lots of universities only focus on delivering the curriculum and produce graduates every year which is fine until they find that significant percentage of their alumni having a hard time finding jobs.
Why? Because they’re educated to work hard to find jobs. Not create jobs.
If universities in Indonesia can switch this mindset on the life after college, that would give more value for students and the industry as a whole. And now, some university already trying this approach giving training, public lecture from influential people in the industry and role-model entrepreneurs to give them the spirit of entrepreneurial.
In Indonesia, there’s several things Indonesian universities can do (in my humble opinion) especially in the tech industry :
- Give training on the latest web technology (programming language, frameworks, servers, OSs, platforms, etc)
- Invite successful entrepreneurs (preferably alums) to give entrepreneurial background to students and business/management education
- Switch mindset from curriculum-based university, to research-based university
- Compensate and give rewards for innovation, maybe by incubating student business/companies
- Work closely and directly with people in the industry (tech companies, investors, startups, etc)
If Indonesian universities can do this, it’s one step closer to an innovative and dynamic tech industry in Indonesia. And *maybe*, Indonesia can be the next Silicon Valley. That’s my opinion, but I would love to hear more additional comment from you guys.
need a guest post from university perspectives, don’t hesitate to contact me 😀
Totally agreed. Watching from both sides of the table (as an university student and also actively engaging in startups community in Indonesia) have made me thinking a lot. Not only that Indonesian startups need mentorship/incubation but also we need to prepare the future, the next 5-10-20 years. We need to plant the mindset, the culture of the universities like Stanford in SV.
For example, Bina Nusantara University is the supposed to be best IT university, yet they’re as good as disconnected from the local dotcom industry. I really hope that they(and also all the universities especially those focusing on IT) can really move from ‘getting into multinational companies’ mindset to ‘creating jobs by starting a startup’ which is a multinational company as well!
It’s just my opinion, sorry if i misspoke anything.
While in principle I agree with the sentiment of this article, I feel it is slightly naive to expect that universities should be the catalysts that start a chain reaction leading to “the next Silicon Valley”.
Why? Because the birth of Silicon Valley was not simply down to Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, etc. It was down to the culture of entrepreneurship that was facilitated by the authorities and policy makers, through tax breaks, through incentives, heck, through not trying to bleed you dry through “biaya administrasi”. Even if the brilliant minds and innovative policies of Stanford, Berkely, CMU, etc. were in place right now in Indonesia universities, I doubt graduates would be as eager to start businesses up in our environment. One only needs to look at how the international community perceives ‘ease of doing business’ in Indonesia. This is why I am in such awe of Indonesian startups today. They do so not _because_ of government initiatives, but _in spite_ of government… err, complexities.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that Indonesian universities should be doing all that you suggest. Here at UI, at least at the Faculty of Computer Science, we’ve started several such initiatives. Inviting entrepreneurs to give guest lectures, collaborating with several companies to promote innovative works, setting up business incubators, etc. There are a lot of teething problems, for sure, and it’s going to be a slow process (particularly in a state university), but we have to start somewhere. Pak Harry Kaligis once mentioned that you can’t teach entrepreneurship within the period of a 3 SKS class, and I agree. Entrepreneurship is something that needs to be instilled over a much longer period of time. But students need to be able to look outside of their campus and see an industry that is ready to support their initiatives. For instance, industry here has traditionally not been willing to collaborate with universities for industrial research.
Perhaps I’m being too negative on the landscape of IT industry in Indonesia today. After all, I’m just an academic who lives in the “ivory tower” of academia. I’d love to be proven wrong.
Why do you need to wait to be contacted? Let’s hear it here!
Sigit purnomo is lecturer at Atma Jaya Yogyakarta XD