Did you see this story in the New York Times yesterday? “Sloan-Kettering Chief Is Accused of Taking Research.” Craig Thompson, who worked at a research institute affiliated with University of Pennsylvania, starts a company, Agios, and now is being sued for “taking research.” Apparently there are no specific claims–not patent infringement or removal of materials. It looks like Thompson did a lot of research, realized where new work could go in the area of cancer metabolism–what the company calls “metabolic rewiring,” and started a company to go after his ideas.
Universities do not own ideas–at least not yet, thank goodness. They do not have trade secret claims on faculty. They do not have non-compete claims for research (except sometimes limitations on being a PI for another organization on grants that could come through the university). They do not “own” “research.”
One can see in this case, however, how the present assignment binge is the result of a mindset, rather than the cause of it. The desire to dominate–“own” in the folklore usage–others runs deep in administration, like a craving for order. The bureaucratic thought is: if only this place were properly ordered, we bureaucrats could get something done. That may be true for one’s office desk (though not always), but it isn’t true for the social setting for research. Entropy–social and research entropy–may be a sign useful work is being done on a system, and to suppress that entropy, to make the disorder go away, actually suppresses, rather than benefits, the work.
For all that, in the area of exploration and discovery–that kind of research–pre-planning and orderliness go only so far, and then they start to place limits on what gets done, what gets discovered, where things veer off plan, off the charts, into the unknown-unknown. The unknown-unknown is the sweet spot of university research, though it’s not so admired by government research sponsors. A few, such as DARPA, have at times made it the place to be, but mostly people demand “solutions”–check that, “transformative innovation”–to what are already well-defined, chronic problems. Even the NSF’s vision for things is largely narrowed so that the “basic” research has to serve the “progress” of a discipline’s prevailing theoretic claims. String theory and global warming forever!
One might think, rather, that the merit in an explorer is knowing when to veer off course, and when veering is merely giving in to distraction. The difference between pursuit and distraction may be the critical factor in some people having a nose for innovation and others having a lot of happy thoughts off topic. An effort to make research all neat and orderly focuses on the distractions. I remember a major tech company official telling me once that they had such a problem with one of their most productive research teams, because every problem they sent to the team for resolution turned into this explosion of all sorts of things, none of which was responsive to the request. To get anything done in business, one has to manage the veering–postpone it, at least, until a specification is finished, a prototype product built, and the feature list finalized.
That’s because in business, one does need to plan, and it’s a very good thing to plan. An ink-jet printer doesn’t coalesce out of parts simply by a bit of waiting behind a half-silvered window. Even exploration takes planning–but it is of a different form–there can be an objective, and there can be preparations to gather the supplies one anticipates needing. There can even be a proposed direction to head. But from there, it has to be up to those doing the exploration when and how to veer off course. The policy for the exploration has to be firm enough to get some preparation done, but weak enough to allow veering off as indicated.
That’s a problem for administrators, because they confuse guidance and authority. Truisms about preparation become laws of order, and obedience a sign of respect for authority, even though the authority is petty and the sign is worse than kissing the floor and talking to it rather than the caliph.
Not only do universities not own research, their administrators should not envy it. The university gains its reputation as research inspires practice. No matter whether that inspiration is in the community, in government, in companies, or in faculty and students. To try to cut off that inspiration, because it is not part of the “plan” administrators have, is to cut off the essential veering from the research plan to a thing that the research exists for–to go after something at a tempo, and with a flexibility, and with a focus, best found in companies. That appears to be what happened, say, with Genentech, and one would expect it is still happening as faculty break from their research plans with an idea, an epiphany. (I wrote about this in a book review for Science in December–behind a paywall–sorry).
The administrator wants the epiphany to be: how to do more sponsored research. But for the explorer, the sponsored project is merely the ship. What the explorer wants to do is find an island and move inland. The administrators cannot fathom this, for their deal is with the ship, and for innovation, sadly, the ship is expendable. Interestingly enough, many sponsors of university research–industry and government alike–share this view. The sponsored project is just an excuse to get money to explorers. The research contract is the way of choking the money out of the sponsor’s accounts, and preventing the administrators from taking all of it for their own purposes (though they still manage to get about 1/3). Other than things like clinical trials and routine testing to a protocol, the deal for exploration is to set out, do some preliminaries, and then hope there is something way cool to veer toward, unexpected, emergent, out of the ordinary. Not distraction. Not just fiddling, but something worth veering toward.
Once there is a veer underway, then all those things in the contract about reporting and ownership come into play. The veer can move outside the anticipated deliverables, outside even the statement of work. The veer can even move outside the company’s previous ideas about future business. Here we get a variation on the Teece dilemma–who should “own” the work of the veer? Should it be the investigator, doing the veering–since it wouldn’t happen without the investigator’s choice? Should it be the university, since it serves as the host for the work? The sponsor, since the sponsor put up funds to start the work off in a given direction? Some other company, because it would be the best one to manage things in the veer? Or, perhaps no one should own? Or better yet, perhaps bits and pieces of it should be owned in different ways, and this might get sorted out not all at once, but by incremental offers and acceptances, dibs and investments. This last bit will be horrifying to the tech transfer folks who want “title certainty” and want the title to cover everything that they will to control and profit from–“research” and everything.
When Cottrell invents the electrostatic precipitator and the invents Research Corporation in 1912 (Happy 100th, RC), he assigns most of the rights in his patent to RC, but reserves the US West Coast states for himself, to license personally and benefit from personally. Seems like a smart move–keep stuff one knows at a scale one can manage, and move the rest off for an agent to take care of, with the smarts the agent will have or develop.
Owning it all, for research, runs against the natural history of exploration. That is true for the expedition leader, as well as its financial backers, as well as for anyone in the “public” who thinks nothing should be owned, not even the new expertise of the explorers, who if they profit from their new expertise, they should have to pay something back for it. These are all forms of envy, and envy while in small amounts might be a motivator, in chronic amounts is an antagonist of getting anything done. Administrative envy, elevated to policy, is the worst of all–rationalized as “proper” and enforced as a sign of respect. You may now speak to the floor. All this does is pit the explorer against a set of policy claims made too strong to give effect to what everyone (but the administrators, apparently) wants, which is to get beyond what is planned and discover something that isn’t–to veer off and be rewarded for doing so.
It is as if sponsored research contains as well a “hue and cry.” In England, the “hue and cry” was a standing command by the King that his citizens should call out when a crime is observed, and others are to render assistance. Rather than having everyone maintain written plans for what to do in the emergencies one can plan for, the “hue and cry” approach is mind-boggling simple and comprehensive.
How about that for research innovation? When someone has an epiphany and is about to veer off, raise a call for assistance, and then folks who are able should pitch in and help. We had that mandate in our university software licensing shop: if you were working a deal and needed help, especially as it got towards closing, you could call on anyone to help–creating relationships was the goal. It makes some sense for university research as well. Why should a grant isolate the investigators? Why should the contract on IP so set in stone that no veering is encouraged, anticipated, or allowed? One might say, a university research project requires a weak form of contract–or something else, that is firm, but not so firm as to be something to “enforce” in the courts and not so weak as to be “more like guidelines.”
I think this social form exists. We see it in forms such as friendship and loyalty, in reciprocal exchanges, and in personal commitments that endure outside of any law or contract. These forms exist in research as well. They are part of the integrity of the discipline, and cannot be replaced by contracts or paperwork. Administrators might hate this, but the paperwork is merely a ploy to give administrators a basis for action, since merely telling them what is going to happen is hopelessly lacking in “documentation” and “certainty.” So research has to have this “certain” component (the imaginary part) appended to the “real” component (the part in which folks commit to studying until there’s a great opportunity to veer).
I see these startups as signs of veers-in-progress. Forget the money-envy for a moment. Look at the investment, the focus, the effort to get things done way faster than the plodding mechanisms of university contracting, or even of government funding, or even of reporting to the archival literature. As one founder of a startup at the University of Washington told me, “We had better technology in the company within months than we ever had in our UW lab.” Rather than see a start up as a means to make money through investment, or even to add jobs, folks might see it as a veer, a move to increase dramatically the pace at which an area is pursued to make something generally usable.
For this, one of the worst things to do would be to create “fake veers.” To create companies that are designed to look like bona fide explorer veers but are there just to try to capture investment money from gullible investors or to attract attention to their program of making companies. What we need are real veers, even real veers in tech transfer programs and economic development programs.
How does this differ from the missionaries to Hawai’i who “came to do good and did well”? How does it address the change in values rather than the change in plan? How does it deal with fraud and theft? I don’t know. It is a mystery. We can’t deal with the intelligent fraud. There is no defense that preserves the community. We deal with it when we see it, I guess. Raise a hue and cry.
Innovation is like this, at least in university research settings. The university provides a grammar of formalities for proposing projects, securing funding from sponsors, and doing the work. But it is the investigators and their sponsors who decide what is communicated in that grammar, and eventually, it is also these folks who decide whether the activity has been productive–not because every contract provision was performed to the satisfaction of an administrator, but because the activity found reason to veer.
To my way of thinking Agios, the company started by Dr. Thompson, is just another instance of research veering. Of course it will spill over and out of the host institution. Of course it will carry with it ideas that perhaps could have been developed in the university–but maybe not, or maybe only slowly, or maybe in dull ways. Maybe at some point folks realize they cannot stay on the public access channel forever, and have to move to Hollywood if they want to get a starring role. The venue has to change. And face it, the university is a lousy venue to develop or show off new technology when you want to get things done the way you need to get things done. You need people working for you, not badgering you about how generic policies read, and how you are always the exception to their mediocre vision.
To Penn, I say, “Pull the litigation, celebrate the effort, get over the institutional envy.” You never know what Dr. Thompson might have intended, should his company become successful. Maybe you were in line for a generous share. Maybe now that’s not going to happen. Maybe now you get nothing, for your litigation. All that does is cost the company. There’s no public purpose served at this point, even if there were “infringement.” Give the man a license, celebrate success, and offer that same license to others. Figure it out, folks. It’s about transferring the capability and empowering the adopters, not fussing the paperwork or making money or foisting institution-envy on the public as if you are some jilted lover who was hoping to marry for the money or the fame.
To Dr. Thompson, I say: “Go for it! Cure cancer if you can. Veer as you need to. Give back to those that support you. Help those that are working to this same goal.”
[Update. It appears that Penn’s shakedown was successful. The suit was settled with Agios accepting an intellectual property agreement. Thompson’s attorney described Penn’s court pleadings as “scattershot and disorganized.” What better way to run a shakedown? Just have enough legal budget to keep shooting until someone pays to have the shooting stop. Worked for Penn, worked for Missouri, worked for Yale.]