We need more academic thinking in tech

Academia finds itself in an odd spot when it comes to developing tech industry talent. On one hand, despite appearances to the contrary, universities are leaning further and further towards a business model that prioritizes profit over their original ideals.

On the other hand, there are a number of technology leaders who seemingly pine for the presumed comfort of academia, where theoretical thinking – rather than spreadsheets, budget burn rate, and headcount management – can be prioritized.

The tech industry isn’t unique in this regard; historians love becoming professors, journalists like to give guest lectures, and plenty of journeyman tradespeople find themselves teaching the next generation of carpenters, plumbers, and the like. This is nothing new, except the IT sector is seeing more and more people jump to a different ship.

But the most value can be found in academics bringing their unique perspectives to the enterprise, rather than the other way around.

As always with these sorts of things, the landscape is muddy. There are tech-focused academics like Georgetown University’s Cal Newport, who are leading professors as well as industry entrepreneurs. Newport runs a YouTube channel focused on productivity, but much of his work is underpinned by his background in theoretical computer science. Similarly, we’ve seen a number of tech-academics find audiences of various sizes. Some, like Lex Friedman, have established widespread podcast audiences interviewing the likes of Demis Hassabis.

In June, I wrote a piece that looked at why the sector can benefit from academic labor, what those academics need to know when making the shift, and what trends there are in terms of the need for academic expertise in the sector. In the last few months, those needs have come even further into focus. There are universities where the heads of educational development are AI evangelists. We now have a world, especially in North America, where academic budgets are under increasing pressure and no university in the world will turn down millions in research dollars. Well, wouldn’t you know it: tech companies love to be associated and integrated into the academic sector.

I think academic and theoretical thinking, at a time where projects and companies like Google DeepMind and OpenAI are in need of this sort of labor, are also a possible antidote to the extremes of the bootstrapped startup methodology.

While these self-starter views won’t suddenly disappear, and might even proliferate further in the short and medium term, the injection of talent that is rooted in research and a slower working methodology is vital.

However, as with any industry trend, there is a danger here. Just because an academic is at the proverbial decision making table doesn’t mean they will be listened to and it also doesn’t mean they won’t rally around a problematic premise. I’m sometimes uncomfortable with AI cheerleaders in academic settings because, thanks to being a specialist, they’re less likely to look beyond their own profession and look at downstream effects. For example, AI evangelists teaching educators how to use AI to create lesson plans – a hypothetical but all too realistic example – feel counterintuitive. If the same evangelist instead turned to teaching educators the difference between generative and traditional AI, or helping them find AI tools used for accessibility and inclusion, then I’m all for it. To rephrase an old real estate slogan: it’s all about context, context, context.

It’s here that academic thinking, rooted in the humanities as well as concepts such as ethical AI, can play a role.

What I find interesting is that the headlines are less and less about the students graduating university and becoming tech leaders, and more about long-time academics shifting over to entrepreneurship.

With the Gates and Zuckerbergs of the world, we were talking about drop outs – about how the academic environment just wasn’t the right space for these ‘visionaries’. Now, we’re seeing academic spaces, as they become more business development focused, building grounds for new technological talent. Yes, the plucky upstarts are still there, but so are middle-aged academics creating health-tech startups and business incubators. We have reached a stage where it’s incredibly attractive to tech companies for your resume to have an advanced degree and more academics could embrace this with a willingness to get out of the academic tower and muck about in the moat.

Amid increased return to office mandates, the pressures of turning a profit on tech companies both young and old, and the shifting dynamics of the IT industry, I foresee a far simpler problem that may arise: academics don’t tend to like meetings.

This might seem odd and reductionist – but there’s never been a more obvious boredom than the one that exists in a faculty meeting. Tech companies, and their leaders, are at their best and their worst when they have their hands on all parts of the business. Academics, on the whole, are also against meddlers. Most, even the incredibly practical ones, tend to want to be left alone to do their research and teach.

Whether academics succeed in the industry depends on whether they are actually allowed to do their work, whether they can adapt to a different schedule, and whether they can translate theoretical underpinnings into actionable paths for enterprises.

We need academics in the tech sector, just the same as we need industry leaders contributing to academic environments. To achieve this, however, we need an IT environment that is welcoming to this shift. Expecting a square peg to fit in a round hole is not going to work, but neither is egotistical pandering. Part of the success of the sector is when there is compromise.

Academics are there to provide a foundation and at a time of seismic change, it’s about time we saw a little bit more of their expertise. It’s often historians who sound the alarm when something is going awry. Here’s hoping that it can be those steeped in historical knowledge who can help the industry avoid some of the worst pitfalls the future has to offer.