Universities in Indonesia Must Trigger Innovation

Over the past few months, I have met with academics from various universities in Indonesia. The conversations that I did add insight and somewhat clarify the theory that has been in my mind since last year, about how universities have played a big role in shaping Silicon Valley into what it is today and of course how it relates to higher education in Indonesia.

The history of Silicon Valley is inseparable from the universities around the area, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, etc. If you look at this university, they don't just contribute through education and human resources, but with the entrepreneurial spirit and innovation, the soul of Silicon Valley.

These universities provided a lot of the seeds of early Silicon Valley culture, I think what they did significantly was transfer the technology created in the campus labs to companies/industry. Skills and knowledge transferred occurs primarily through existing companies that take the license, or through companies set up by students, staff and faculty. Another alternative is the main contribution through education for engineering and business students to continue to fill the intellectual pool.

From here, you can get some of the below factors that are quite important about what the university can provide for the growth of "Silicon Valley":

• Producing talent and hard skills for engineering (product, business, marketing, etc.)
• Conduct market research and analysis as part of research in research laboratories
• Rewarding innovation and entrepreneurship
• Creating the perfect environment to grow, incubate students and provide easy access to basic technologies
• Provide access to the next stage of the incubator, investors or direct access to the industry

Now is the time for universities in Indonesia to step up and make more contributions to industry in order to fill the huge gap between standard curriculum and industry requirements. For now, I think many universities are only focused on delivering curriculum and producing graduates every year. This was actually good, until they discovered that a significant percentage of their alumni had difficulty finding work.

Why? Because they are educated to work hard in finding work, not creating jobs.

If universities in Indonesia can shift from this mindset to life after college, it will provide more value for students and the industry as a whole. And now, several universities have tried this approach by providing training, public lectures from influential people in the industry and role model entrepreneurs to give them an entrepreneurial spirit.

In Indonesia, there are several things universities can do here, especially in the technology industry (IMHO):

• Provide training on the latest web technologies (programming languages, frameworks, server, OS, platform, etc)
• Invite successful entrepreneurs (preferably alumni) to provide students with knowledge about entrepreneurship and business/management backgrounds
• Changing the mindset from a university-based curriculum, to a research-based university
• Compensate and reward innovation, perhaps by incubating student businesses/companies
• Approach and work directly with people in the industry (tech companies, investors, startups, etc.)

If universities in Indonesia can do this, it is one step closer to Indonesia's innovative and dynamic technology industry. And possible, Indonesia could become the next Silicon Valley. That's my opinion, what readers think.