Should biomedical engineering/ biotech academics aim to start businesses?
The NIH seems to take the opposite view of you. The NIH provides funding for the training of a large number of biomedical engineers. The individual NRSA mechanism (F31 and F32) provides some of the most prestigious funding for PhD students and post docs. This funding comes with a pay back obligation such if you leave academia for industry within a few years of receiving NRSA funding, you can be required to pay back the funding. The NIH is in essence saying "do not leave academia" to the best biomedical engineers it trains. If the NIH thought more people should be starting up companies, I believe it would drastically increase the funding to the SBIR mechanism and rework the pay back mechanism to encourage individuals to leave instead of stay.