Universities are giant R&D departments dreaming up the “next big thing.” The problem is, they are not very good at making the transition from ideas to market applications.
Many academics have no experience in the business world. They do not understand the difference between an interesting new idea and a real market opportunity. But, don’t try to tell them that. Rather than truly partnering with the private sector to mine the wealth of new product applications, they set up rules and stipulations that keep many good opportunities locked away in their labs, and push many applications that are not ready or not truly viable into the market. They do this through their technology transfer policies and tight control by administrative and faculty committees.
Alfred Mann, inventor of the first insulin pump, wants to give hundreds of millions of dollars to universities with one simple condition. He wanted to the right to pick which ideas get funding based on the experience that he and his staff has had in launching new medical devices, rather than allow a committee of faculty and administrators to decide which should get funding with the money he donates to the university. So far, he has found no takers.
From Forbes.com:
Mann is puzzled by the rejections. As he sees it, universities should welcome his guidance since they typically do a bad job in commercializing their professors’ inventions. Professors, he says, don’t know how to turn their ideas into products. University patent offices have trouble finding industrial partners. He cites statistics showing that billion in government and industry sponsored university research each year leads to only billion in commercial licensing revenue, a paltry 2.7% return.
But universities say Mann wants too much control for too little money. Experts in technology transfer tend to agree. Robert Lowe, a professor of entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University, who studies the topic, says that universities don’t want a single entity to have first-look rights to option its inventions because it can interfere with academic freedom and amount to a giveaway.
If technology transfer is to be part of the engine that drives our emerging entrepreneurial economy, universities need to stop being arrogant and understand that those with market experience can help the common good by accelerating new products coming out of their ivory towers.
(Thanks to Jim Stefansic for passing this along).
There are many valid reasons why faculty–science faculty in particular–are careful about their relationships with funding organizations and cautious about the corporatization of the American university. This is especially true at land grant universities.
Valuing academic freedom isn’t “arrogant.”