Can Academia Truly Help Small-Business Owners? Opinion.

Seven small business owners, professors, and leaders answered the question of whether academia can help small business owners. In the opinion of a small business owner, academia offers too much theory and too few real skills. According to the president of the National Federation of Independent Business, academia can play a role in the development of small business, but colleges and universities must first overcome many barriers. From a chief executive officer's point of view, business and academia must form a dynamic alliance; if the premise of universities is to provide pure theory and no specifics, the premise is wrong. The president of the Association of Small Business Development Centers finds that strains exist because small business owners and academics both question the value of the relationship. A professor presents educators' viewpoint: academia can help many entrepreneurs, but there are barriers to a successful working relationship: client-counselor mismatches, antigeneralist bias, and entrepreneurs' ignorance of all available sources of help. According to another professor, if research and insights could be expressed clearly to small business owners and emerging entrepreneurs, a great deal of experience, research, and knowledge could be networked among those interested in improving the competitive edge. The administrator of the Small Business Administration reports that the traditional role of universities has never been more important to small businesses. (YLB)