Freedom to innovate policies limit the manner in which universities and other non-profit organizations claim ownership of intellectual property developed in the research and instructional programs they host. These limitations, far from being adverse to institutional interests, promote a creative, engaged, and personally responsible research enterprise. Here are ten arguments for senior university administrators to advocate for freedom to innovate.
Freedom to innovate:
1. Is a proven innovation generator.
Freedom to innovate is not itself new: Freedom to innovate was the method of choice for three generations of academic inventors and their administrations. It was the method that was cited by advocates of Bayh-Dole, in contrast to federal agency policies that required government ownership of inventions made with federal support. Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From has chronicled how various freedom to innovate strategies have operated for hundreds of years. Networked, non-market models of innovation appear to be the primary generator of the good ideas that have had a lasting impact on our society, science, and technology.
2. Allows universities to make more money in more reliable ways.
If money is your goal, then Freedom to Innovate should be at the top of your list. Forget the smooth-tongued arguments for huge income from patent royalties–it happens, but not often or reliably enough that it will happen during your time in a position of responsibility. The really big money is in services, donations, and subsidies, and these come through a combination of goodwill, recognition of role, and capability to execute that role. Universities such as Waterloo in Canada have been remarkably successful using this model. Indeed, the pullback in state support for public universities may well be tied to the widely broadcast claim that universities are or could be making millions of dollars from licensing programs. Sadly, most universities are not making millions–the claims for income have proven unfounded; however, the damage has been done and public funds will be difficult to recover. Freedom to Innovate would be a start for this healing process.
3. Builds research clusters.
Universities demanding ownership of research results create huge barriers to collaboration and the flow of information and advisory services. There are reasons for a university to agree to own some inventions. Institutional ownership is compatible with the development of open standards, preservation of access for everyone and especially the research community, regardless of the tax classification of the organizations involved. Being an open neighborhood, rather than a gated, exclusive community, is the stronger foundation on which to create clustering effects. While there are notable examples of university-related research clusters, where is the evidence that these were formed by a university program of compulsory ownership and exclusive licensing?
4. Offloads expense, complexity, liability, and distraction.
Universities are not configured to manage patent licenses as a process activity, nor for new ventures, nor in exclusive relationships. There is still a role for university ownership of some inventions, but not as a comprehensive, compulsory program that demands ownership outright and defaults to make-them-pay licensing. Freedom to innovate shifts the burden of these activities to private hands, where in a fascinating transformation, they are better matched to available resources and therefore not nearly the complexity, not nearly the bother to university programs.
5. Centers an institution on its public mission and role as steward.
The shining roles for universities in innovation are those of advocate, catalyst, and trustee. Not only that, but for federally funded research, the role of trustee is mandated by federal regulation for intangible assets acquired or improved with federal funding. When a university makes ownership of inventions (or other assets) a condition of employment, where salary is paid from federal dollars, a university comes within the scope of this federal policy. Those focused on Bayh-Dole invention ownership and money-from-licenses possibilities ignore compliance with the trustee requirement. As a catalyst, a university preserves its independence, is recognized for its service, serves as an advocate for integrity in research and commercial dealings alike, and supports both collaboration and competitive interests without becoming a self-interested party and abandoning its public role. As patent owner seeking rents, a university utterly loses its standing to advocate to the public for the value of any given research discovery.
6. Allows rapid movement of expertise to industry and startups.
Freedom to innovate does not require the steps of assignment of inventions (and other assets) to the university, combined then with administrative processing and the overhead of institutional demands on any licensing relationship–relationships that are expected to be exclusive in almost every case. These steps introduce delays of months to years in transactions involving key research findings–delays that often destroy opportunity and goodwill and shift a university licensing office’s money-making efforts from practitioners to speculators (where it is labeled euphemistically as “startups” or “entrepreneurial”). Without the burden of this bureaucratic overhead, information and technology may move rapidly–in hours or days–rather than slowly–in months or years–into practice settings. This means that graduate students and faculty may start companies around their findings without having to first assign ownership to the university and then negotiate, often through proxies, a burdensome license back from the university.
7. Generates political support for research and instructional programs.
When a university is no longer a self-interested party crowing about how much money it can make by demanding licensing terms from industry (even when it clearly has not and likely will not) or threatening to hand key research findings over to speculators if industry won’t take its deals, then the university restores its position to be a focus for political support for both research and instructional programs. When a university supports innovation for the benefit of others, it sparks a reciprocal interest in the community in supporting university programs. This is not command-and-control politics–that is, the politics of tyranny (which is what monopoly control of inventions easily can become)–but rather the politics of confidence and reciprocity (both signs of a healthy community economy around discovery and new practice).
8. Contributes to regional economic development.
Compulsory invention ownership programs are now consumed by strategies to force companies that take licenses to university inventions to remain in the state in which the invention was made. This is nonsense. Startup companies, especially, must move to where they can find smart investors, ready access to services, and earlyvangalist customers. It is adverse to innovation to demand poison-pill terms in licenses or state support to force these companies to “stay” when their survival is based on “go.” Freedom to innovate refocuses regional economic development programs to cultivate attractive infrastructure rather than fund companies directly but with chains that hold them back. The result: companies will move to the region; companies will spend on research and development; the region will find its own strengths in a market rather than bureaucratic economy.
9. Restores shared governance for research results.
When it comes to research, universities have traditionally been guardians of the dignity of work and faculty control of work. In universities, the smarts are at the periphery, not under central, organized control. Shared governance reflects this division of labor, which has served universities remarkably well. The great increase in federal funding after the second world war, followed by the misinterpretation of the Bayh-Dole Act to require institutional ownership of inventions made with federal support, has led administrators to undermine shared governance for research findings. While doing so appears to provide order, it does so by disordering and disempowering those that do control the work–the faculty and in particular the principal investigators that lead extramurally funded research. Freedom to innovate restores shared governance in this critical area of university activity, giving faculty both the incentive and responsibility to manage their own affairs on behalf of the community and the university.
10. Attracts top talent.
Talent has no interest in serfdom and does not willingly choose to be imprisoned, no matter the efforts made to make intellectual incarceration appear attractive. No amount of friendly faces, pretty guidance documents, or prophylactic policy statements can mask the telling odor of bureaucratic control over creative work. Compulsory, comprehensive ownership policies, tied to licensing programs fixated on institutional income over practice, reek of failure and distrust. Freedom to innovate is based on confidence in talent, providing creative individuals with a support environment in which to flourish. As Milton argued cogently (following Aristotle on this point), what one does under compulsion offers no moral standing to the one who acts. Compulsion-based invention policies are, in this way, de-moralizing to creative individuals, leaving non-compliance as the primary means by which to recover moral standing and express character. Top talent will move to positions in which it has freedom from institutional bureaucracies. Freedom to innovate is one such freedom.