The scope and functionality of the National Innovation Competition as an instrument to promote academic entrepreneurship in South Africa

This study focuses on academic entrepreneurship. It commences with a literature reviewon international trends in academic entrepreneurship, with a particular focus on incentiveschemes used by selected countries to encourage innovativeness in academicinstitutions. Linkages between these incentives schemes and the improvement in thelevel of innovations made are demonstrated. This study will also show that in somecountries, such as Brazil and Finland, these innovation incentives have led to theformation of start-up companies and an increased number of patents.The international scenario in academic entrepreneurship is linked to the South Africanscenario, as presented in the chapter on the science and technology landscape in SouthAfrica. The main focus of the South African scenario will be on the National InnovationCompetition (NIC), which is an instrument of the Innovation Fund specifically aimed atencouraging and providing innovation incentives at the level of higher educationinstitutions. This research report also provide findings of interviews with different peoplewithin the academic entrepreneurship fraternity as well as an assessment of thedifferences between the winning and the non-winning business plans, which are used asa basis of providing incentives to the winners of the NIC.Recommendations are made in an attempt to provide solutions to the challengesencountered in the NIC at both institutional levels, as participants, and at governmentlevel, as funders of the NIC. This will hopefully improve the effectiveness and efficiencyof the NIC. Although the NIC was only started in 2004, it is envisaged that areas ofimprovement can be identified at this early stage. This, coupled with the lessons learntfrom the international literature review, will provide a mechanism that will make the NICa powerful instrument to encourage innovation at HEI (Higher Education Institution)level. The conclusions drawn from this report include lessons learnt from theinternational literature review.