As we in the US celebrate another Thanksgiving holiday, it is also time to thank all the tech transfer folks for their hard work in the service of innovation for a better society. We may not always agree on methods (freedom works better than compulsion, say), but we have goals in common, and it is worth keeping that in mind.
Thanks to all those who voted to reject SJR 8223, a statewide referendum here in the State of Washington that would have allowed the University of Washington and Washington State University to divert public operating accounts from education and research to speculating in company stocks. Over at PublicMission [presently archived in transition to a new web host], we worked to explain how this is a very bad idea, poorly conceived and implemented. The voters of the state agreed. Message to the state’s leaders: no, this was not the “far left” failing to compromise–it was the center. Ponder that.
Thanks to all the faculty, staff, students, and business folks that have made Open 3d Printing a top program in all things related to off-road 3d printing, solid modeling, and creative work. If nothing else, it shows how open programs with dedicated leaders attract talent and opportunities, and leave all sorts of new things blossoming in their path. Folks on the hunt for venture opportunities might take notice of how this works. Ownership is not the starting point. Mutual respect is. Tough lesson in some quarters.
Thanks to the universities and companies that are working to explore new approaches–especially alternatives to the speculative monopoly model that has roosted in American universities and driven out the diversity of pathways for scholarship to innovation that once prevailed. The vanguard isn’t the consensus assertion of institutional control. The smart institutions are the ones that choose to hold back their expansion of power rather than take everything and release only what’s worthless.
Thanks to the organizations working for innovation freedom–especially Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, American Association of University Professors, the Berkman Center at Harvard, the Pragmatic Innovation Group, and Sen. Maralyn Chase and other members of the Washington State legislature. You all rock.
And thanks to you, readers of Research Enterprise, for taking an interest in all things researchy and innovational. There is good stuff to do out and around, and it takes more than just the spark of idea to make inroads into the world of status quo habits and expectations. Building the social networks, the breakthrough (or break-in) networks, is more than invention, more than speculative investment–it is personal commitment to see folks succeed with their vision, whether it is a solo startup or an open distro or a complex research consortium.