University Business Link. Connecting Academic Inspirations to Commercial Markets.

Entrepreneurs turn ideas into business and money. Rubbish rescued from tips make valuable construction materials and fuels. Microwave ovens and matchsticks, accidental discoveries, became huge industries. An annoyingly sticky substance sold as Superglue. Another pathetically weak glue led to Post-It Notes. Antibiotics and Insulin, discovered by chance observation, are multibillion dollar businesses.

It's not just money at stake, also fame. Have you heard of Mr. Loud? No? Have you heard of Mr. Biro? A name made famous by the biro ballpoint pen. Mr Loud's ballpoint pen was patented in 1888. Without business success Loud's patent lapsed. If he had hooked up with an entrepreneur we would be borrowing and losing each other's Louds. Biro's patent was issued fifty years later in 1938. For decades Biro's pens have been in huge demand. In 1950 another entrepreneur, Marcel Bich (with an 'h'), used new plastic manufacturing techniques to produce the biro so cheaply it became disposable. When empty of ink you didn't refill it, you threw it and bought a new one. The Bic (without an 'h') biro became a great commercial success found today in offices, homes and pockets around the World. By 2006, 56 years after its launch, one hundred billion Bics had been sold.

The combination of Inspiration, Invention, Innovation, Execution and Commercialisation is the magic. It is the magic that creates businesses, jobs, wages and profits. And generates taxes to pay for schools and hospitals. Taking Inspiration to Investors and Manufacturers. Guiding Inventions down Development Paths and Sales Channels into Markets. Selling Innovations to Consumers. Bringing Incomes to workers and dividends to shareholders.

The famous universities including Stanford and Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, Imperial and UCL, and numerous Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) successfully link academics and entrepreneurs. They boast thousands of spinoffs raising billions of dollars of capital. These leading universities have very sharp expensive business lawyers representing them to negotiate lucrative linkages with very sharp lawyers expensively representing the entrepreneurs. Negotiating not least to ensure the university gets its bite taking a share as equity or royalty. Students and professors give birth to companies, with some growing into world leading giants.

Our Sri Lankan universities and higher education establishments want and need to do the same. Sri Lanka's University Business...