I’m giving some thought to “bureaukleptic” innovation management. That’s my word for it. Essentially, this consists in claiming everything one can, and then releasing what one doesn’t want. This approach is favored by folks who don’t have any idea what they are doing and know it. So they draft a conservative policy–which ends up being incredibly grasping and ineffective. The premise is, things that the organization doesn’t need can be let go. But it’s an unworkable premise–really, it is a lie, not merely an unrealized dream or naive hope. No way for an organization to let go under a bureaukleptic approach, and no amount of making it look orderly, consistent, fair, or cosmetically rational changes this.
Short piece is, if someone expresses an interest in claimed IP, then there’s a reason to hold it, and if they don’t, then it’s not worth the effort to release it. Is she a witch, anyone? Anyone who wants something, then, has to pretend they don’t, really. Even if the inventors want stuff to be publicly available, they’ll be accused of conflict of interest because they might make money consulting or want to somehow in spite to prevent the university from profiting. It’s more totally worse that just this, but that’s for another post. Overall, the cost to manage IP in a bureaukleptocracy is too great to allow access across all the ways university research assets could propagate.
There is no point in trying to improve a bureaukleptocracy. In this regard, UIDP and the Lambert Agreements are off track. It’s tough to eradicate a bureaukleptocracy as well. The Kerr-Drucker hypothesis applies: Change comes from the outside, build out rather than fixing the old.
The edge that is necessary is to build out to compete with the bureaukleptocrats. That means: getting choice to university investigators, inventors, and entrepreneurs–not cutting them free of their reseach and public commitments–but rather empowering them to be leaders with regard to them. With leadership, responsibility. If they want to hand their stuff to the bureaukletpocrats, let it be their choice, not the BKCs’ policies.
So much for “systems” of IP management that grab everything and claim to release. Doesn’t happen. A lie. Honestly.