The innovateur was compelled to visit first the City of Clowns. The clowns took the innovation from the innovateur. The clowns were not funny, and they were not helpful, and they were not innovative. The innovateur watched smoke rise from a chimney.
Commentary
The visit may build character in the innovateur. It may test the strength of the invention (if it can survive alone in the City of Clowns, it must be potent stuff!)
It is hard to say, however, that as a matter of national innovation policy it is a good thing to send all innovation first to the City of Clowns. But in the bozonet, this makes perfect sense. It is called a university IP Policy, and its purpose is to mandate administrative control over any innovation that looks like it might be money-making. The innovateur has brought a gift. It is nothing new to the clowns, though it may be prized by the innovateur.
We might note that there is a fine line between receiving something as a gift and taking something and calling it a gift. Avarice remains avarice, even if it is “not about the money” and even if it is embedded in “institutional policy” and even if “geez, everybody does it”.
The smoke from the chimney does not represent anything. It is smoke. Watching it, in one’s mind’s eye, in the place of the innovateur, one thinks of all the things that must go on as usual, that nothing is particularly perturbed in the City of Clowns, and there must be some sense of irony or loss that the innovateur must work against to come to a realization.