I am working to get at the root of why anyone would think a compulsory linear model, however driven and resourced, could possibly make any sense at all, especially in light of the last 30 years of dismal failure by university tech transfer offices to improve on the outcomes from the 70 years before that, where the model was uniformly non-compulsory and almost always not university-administrated.
The bits that have to be unwound from the impulsive, sloppy, even bullshit (technical term, see Frankfurt’s On Bullshit) used by administrators are these:
There is a limited and beautiful way in which some research inventions move with diligence to market settings, even using a patent as a foundational asset. Hold that thought.
When university administrators provide resources to any efforts to create private products, it’s a reasonable expectation that they participate in benefits in some way that those involved acknowledge. Let’s figure out how this might happen.
There are even times when, if university researchers are indifferent or negligent with inventions, that someone might step in on behalf of others and take up those rights in support of an initiative. But let’s not assume they are all, or generally, this way.
There is nothing in this that inventors know more about patents or markets than anyone else. There is nothing in this that inventions should not be patented. Or that all inventions should be free to all. Or that patents are essential for research to have impact, or for products to be made, or for money to be paid. There is nothing in all of this that the linear model does not describe some events, some times.
In all of this, there is nothing to show that by making any one approach comprehensive, compulsory, process-bound, and provincial one has done anything good at all. Everything points the other way. Process efficiencies are not indicated. Imposing this superficial bit of policy order is damaging, even to the limited and beautiful bits of the linear model that do work once a decade or so.
Instead, one creates a patent accumulation program that cannot possibly transact on what it demands, disenfranchises the faculty and other research staff that might take actions on their own (within a linear model approach) or other actions (in some other approach, like the one that created the internet), and in desperation administrators blame faculty (for greed, ineptitude, and gullibility), blame industry (for not playing ball with the patent royalty offer), blame tech transfer (for not having smart people or working hard enough or not being industry savvy), or government (for not enough money or policy or laws), and especially the Funding Gap (not enough foolish rich patrons willing to throw away their money to make the linear model appear to work more often that it ever has).
The way to improve university tech transfer so constructed is to tear it back down to an appropriate size–make offices voluntary, selective, focused, and motivated. End the foolish comparisons that tech transfer offices work better than faculty do. They do different work, first; they rarely have the expertise needed going in (and maybe no one does); and in any event, it’s the wrong comparison–the proper one is between the inventor and anyone else in the world who would be the appropriate next best venue to help to develop the vision that goes with the recognition of invention. It is the freedom of this vision that goes with conception that is the motivating power of university research. It is not the patent right that first goes with invention. It is the patent right that goes with vision.
So sure, if a university inventor is so brain dead that the moment of invention carries no vision of what is possible, and the inventor is indifferent to this recognition in others, then yes, lift the invention from those cold lifeless fingers. But otherwise, the great damage is separating vision from invention and then trying to rebuild it as a matter of process and market research and bureaucrats playing at being market savvy while building a big pile of patents in a portfolio.
The vision may but need not be personal entrepreneurial passion. It may be strategic insight, as we see from Carver Mead at CalTech. It may be an open release, such as Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. It may be dedication to patients, community, or whatever. It is that vision that matters to university research. The vision at conception. The vision that goes with why an invention deserves to be recognized. Keeping that vision free of corporate controls until corporations come to play a role in furthering is the essence of early stage invention management. It is not the patent that matters. It is the vision. Only with the vision does the patent have market meaning. Only with vision does the invention have social meaning.
When folks get that, then we can have a discussion about methods.