Chemistry Entrepreneurship for Small and Medium Enterprises Development: A Panacea for Job and Wealth Creation

Abstract

Chemistry is everything and everywhere, as a result chemistry offers wide varieties of business opportunities for small and medium enterprises development than any other discipline. Professional chemists including students of chemistry, with little training on entrepreneurial skills could begin to commercialize their innovations to reap enormous financial benefits; become job creators and contribute positively to the national economic development most especially through the small and medium enterprises.  Chemistry entrepreneurship, a subset of academic entrepreneurship; it involves the process of converting innovations in Chemistry into marketable products for commercial gain. It enables Chemists to take their work beyond publications in academic journals by patenting and commercializing them for economic gains. This paper calls for curriculum re-engineering to fully integrate entrepreneurship into Chemistry curriculum at degree level as well as to encourage researchers to make commercialization a part of their research agenda from the stage of project conceptualization.

Keywords: Chemistry, Chemistry entrepreneurship, Business opportunities, innovations, commercialization, small and medium enterprises.