An Entrepreneurship Model for Future Intelligent Educational Environments

In this paper we introduce a novel entrepreneurial model for funding and managing future intelligent educational environments and other academic business enterprise; the Faculty-Cooperative. The goal of this model is to create a business mechanism where academics are both the owners and customers of the IPR they generate, thereby providing synergy to optimize the educational product for the market, provide an embedded sales team and offer a source of investment for the enterprise. Our model is inspired by the cooperative ethos that has historically existed in universities. In addition we draw on parallels with the Western Cooperative movements and Chinese collectives but in a more virtualised form within the university system. To illustrate the Faculty-Cooperative approach we examine how it might be applied to the formation of an academic enterprise, FortiTo (a manufacturer of the technology that underpins intelligent educational environments and a producer of learning tools for students engaged in learning these new technologies). Whilst this paper describes the early stages of the development of an entrepreneurial model for academic enterprise, our hope it that this paper will promote discussion and participation in what we hope will be a successful model for funding and managing entrepreneurial academic enterprise.