Paul Wellings, Vice Chancellor at Lancaster University, apparently has come out with the idea that government policy should make clear that “the primary purpose of research commercialization is to benefit the economy as a whole, rather than create an income stream for universities.” This was posted on the Linked-In discussion group Licensing Managers. I’ve reposted my reply here.
This is the kind of gesture (“benefit the economy as a whole”) that has great rhetorical merit and provides virtually no operating guidance. Why benefit just a state economy and not look out after a global economy? Why deny local stewards of new findings some standing in how work proceeds, especially given that new technology developments are unlikely to be pre-packaged commodity “ideas” that can be traded around by bureaucrats or the general public like cars and carrots. New high tech insights are often deeply social–the tacit knowledge, the intuition of what can be done next, the possible alternative explanations, the new data that can’t be explained so easily.
A much better policy might be: “we support with funding and acknowledgment those stewards of new research findings–whether individuals, universities, foundations, or companies, whether working together or competitively–that mobilize resources to promote transformation of research findings and artifacts to useful applications.” At this level, ownership doesn’t matter. Licensing revenue doesn’t matter. Warm, fuzzy communal sharing doesn’t matter. What does is encouraging top talent to go on task to do something difficult and uncertain. If getting the next grant is always easier, more certain, and carries more status than the hard work to shape a finding into a form others can understand and use, then “innovation” will always be “someone else’s problem”. If that’s the goal, then, sure, add as much bureaucratic red tape as you can to the researchers and universities working to identify and shape findings for uptake, then blame them for not being so good at it.
The UK
The defect in public policy isn’t in the IP–it’s in how governments in particular support technology-based change relative to the status quo. That’s essentially what research innovation represents–not research findings or IP, but the transformation that intends to displace existing practices–and livelihoods–with new ones. It’s a most difficult thing, obviously, because governments have so much invested in riding whatever keeps them in power. Certainly universities don’t keep them in power, and individual researchers don’t–so it’s attractive to punt everything to “the public” or to “government” or to “industry leaders”. The real debate is over who gets to drive changes to the technology status quo, and in what directions? Given universities are so confused and indifferent and underfunded for this role, perhaps they are better suited than those filled with a passionate intensity for it.