Most universities do not consider a general approach to innovation, or as I would put it, deployment of research-involved new capability (DRINC). The patent-and-license piece is just that, a piece. It’s good to focus on how that particular action comes about, and have some comparative figures (and for that, wouldn’t it be nice for AUTM to audit university self-reported figures, just to tease out whether the data put forth for comparison really is comparable?). But it would also be really helpful to have an accounting of how universities play a role in the broader life of innovation. For that, tacit knowledge, support of services, even purchase of commercial services in support of research all play a role. This goes beyond the usual economic development indicators of impact, which run toward expenditures in a region based on salaries and jobs created by making assumptions about royalties on licenses and profits used in industry.
If the claim is that universities anchor cluster development and clusters represent economic vitality, then it would make good management sense, quite apart from the politics of it, to have a way of accounting for all these activities, whether there’s an overt license from the university or not. Same with sponsored research. Why shouldn’t a consulting relationship be as important to the development and deployment of innovation as a patent license? The lurking question under this is, if innovation practice bridges private interests and university interests, and within that bridge some assets are owned by the university and other assets not owned by the university, and there are yet some important assets in the possession of university personnel and over which policy makes potential claims: should management extend to claim these assets as well, or leave them well enough alone? Another way: what happens if policy were to changed to put *more* assets into the hands of university personnel *without* making a claim for them? Isn’t it odd that almost all of the industry complaints about university research are caught up in issues of university ownership, not private ownership, of inventions?
I can’t imagine university research personnel expressing outrage at being given broader personal rights in what they have created. Maybe research personnel “get it” way better than the establishment administrators fixed on IP. Could it be that an IP policy (and associated conflict of interest policy) that was less invasive in marking out university “corporate” ownership in research would lead to stronger innovation activities? In that regard, much worse than personal conflict of interest in research would be a gross indifference to the potential impact of findings in the community in favor of getting ever more research dollars. If universities didn’t claim systematic ownership of IP, that responsibility would move from administrative procedures to research personnel whos proposals routine claim the potential benefits that will arise from conduct of the research. Claiming administrative responsibility for such claims would appear to feed into an institutional conflict of interest served up by making extramural research funding significant in academic promotion and tenure decisions. The practice claim then would not be to argue that technology transfer parameters should figure in promotion and tenure review, but rather, perhaps, that extramural research funding *should not*.