Duke alumna is hunting good ideas to market

DURHAM -- Kimberly Jenkins had been working at Microsoft for just six months when she went to her boss with an idea, two file folders and plenty of guts.

In one folder: a pitch for selling Microsoft products to universities. In the other: a resignation letter, in case the boss didn't like her one-page pitch.

The boss was Steve Ballmer, who would become Microsoft's CEO. He didn't like Jenkins' idea. But he ran it by the big boss - Bill Gates.

Gates didn't like it either, but he admired Jenkins' moxie. They let her run with the idea. Within a year, Microsoft's new educational products division was responsible for 10 percent of the company's domestic revenue.

And a career in entrepreneurship had been launched.

Now 56, the Duke graduate has returned to her alma mater to apply her expertise to innovation and entrepreneurship.

A few miles west, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is also targeting innovation in a big way, with the recent release of a road map - price $125 million - to improve the university's ability to move research discoveries from the laboratory to the real world.

Leaders at both universities see campuses filled with intellect, curiosity and great ideas but unable to translate many of those ideas into useful products and services that solve problems and create jobs.

Duke connections

Jenkins has two degrees from Duke, a bachelor's in biology and a doctorate in education. A Duke trustee until recently, she comes at the challenge from a businesswoman's perspective.

Her views might shake things up a little.

Jenkins acknowledges that part of her job will be to nudge faculty members out of their comfort zones by thinking more about how to capitalize on their work.

"I don't think it is what they've been trained to do, asked to do, incentivized to do," she said. "I'm not suggesting we turn them into business people. I'm suggesting we intentionally understand their innovations as they pertain to need. A lot of faculty have great ideas in search of a need or a problem."

While many of the pieces are already in place, Jenkins says Duke lacks a central point through which innovativeideas can become reality. Her job is to stimulate that. Part of it will be to encourage people to take risks - like she did at Microsoft - and to be unafraid of failure.

The initiative may prove expensive. Duke doesn't yet have a budget for it, and Jenkins will look to private fundraising to help pay for the programs she hopes will eventually emerge.

Jenkins hopes to approach successful entrepreneurs interested in providing seed money for promising new ideas.

Tar Heel plans

At UNC-CH, campus leaders hope to raise $125 million in private funds for innovation and entrepreneurship ventures. That money will fund seminars, speakers, forums and campus events touching on innovation, said Lowry Caudill, a UNC-CH graduate who is helping lead its effort.

Caudill is a success story that UNC-CH would like to replicate. He studied chemistry at UNC-CH and went on to co-found Magellan Laboratories, a drug development firm in Research Triangle Park. He is one of many students and professors from UNC-CH's chemistry department to turn laboratory ideas into commercial enterprises.

But Caudill says innovation applies to more than science. The university also will look for ways to spark new, clever ideas in arts, music and the humanities.

"Innovation occurs everywhere," Caudill said. "Science is a part of it because at Carolina we have a large science presence. But it's as important in the arts and humanities. It applies to everybody."

At Duke, faculty in some sciences have long been entrepreneurs, said Craig Henriquez, a biomedical engineering professor and chairman of Duke's Academic Council.

"We have faculty who have companies, faculty with patents, faculty used to getting their ideas out," Henriquez said. "I can imagine there are a lot of faculty [outside the sciences] not as familiar with it, who have big ideas and don't know how to get them out."

And Duke and UNC-CH aren't just trying to find more ways to make money.

While plenty of good ideas have led to profitable commercial ventures, leaders on both campuses say that isn't the primary goal. Each is also high on social entrepreneurship, the notion of turning good ideas into solutions to social problems.

Jenkins points to the Duke Engage program, which places students in community service across the world.

"That spawns a lot," she said. "Students go and get involved in Durham or New Orleans or a remote village in Ken ya and come back with an idea about pressing needs, be it drugs or water or gender inequities.

"They come back withideas, and we help them turn those ideas into solutions."