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Author Archives: Gerald Barnett
Next Generation Technology Transfer
After 30 years of effort to build a patent practice around university research, university technology transfer is poised to shift. The pressure presently being put on central control and rigid processes in the name of efficiency is welcome. This pressure … Continue reading
Posted in Bayh-Dole, Technology Transfer
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Slumming and unslumming
I have been reading Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I find myself taken with her account of the Blighted Dullness of orderly “garden city” planners. Jacobs argues that city streets become vital productive places when … Continue reading
Posted in Social Science, Technology Transfer
Tagged Jane Jacobs, slumlord
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Excuse Theory
The most robust area of university technology transfer innovation is the formation of excuses for why the class of success stories is robust but apparently so little is happening. Here are five typical excuses. May as well learn them by … Continue reading
Posted in Technology Transfer
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We are *not* drowning kittens
From time to time that it really does happen that someone invents, gets patents, raises investment, and builds a product that gets sold at market. We say, this event is an instance of a class, or a metonymy for the … Continue reading
Posted in Social Science, Technology Transfer
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Innovation Stories
The story of invention to money happens, generally, afterward. It is a way that stories like this are told. Once there is a product, one can pick any starting point and tell of challenges and effort and luck, so long … Continue reading
Posted in Social Science, Technology Transfer
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Unwinding the Little Linear Model
Let’s unwind university technology transfer practice, from the little linear model out. 1. Commercialization as a product paying a royalty under an exclusive patent license. How much of research invention output gets there? After 30 years, it appears fewer than … Continue reading
Posted in Technology Transfer
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Limitation and Focus
It is easy to confuse focus and limitation. Focus selects valuable things from diversity, mobilizes resources, and aims to achieve a goal. Limitation cuts off consideration of opportunity from diversity and sets up rules to make things simple (or at … Continue reading
Posted in Metrics, Technology Transfer
Tagged Carolina Express, commercialization, focus, limitation, linear model
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Metrics of "technology untransfer"
Stuff arising in research is hardly technology. Research deals in glimmers and epiphanies, arguable discovery and hypothesis, data and more data, theory formation and creative destruction of theory. In all this, research inventions are not, generally, technology, and transfer does … Continue reading
Posted in Agreements, Metrics, Technology Transfer
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Some Wrinkles
[Seven years ago, before I studied the history of Bayh-Dole, I still thought it was a workable framework for the management of inventions made with federal support. It’s amazing how one’s perspective can change with some context. Bayh-Dole was built … Continue reading
Posted in Bayh-Dole, Technology Transfer
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Pressing the Issues
What are the pressing issues facing university “technology transfer”? If we start with how to encourage a rich engagement between research inquiry and the broader community, we are at the nub of it. The particular variety of engagement called technology … Continue reading
Posted in Bayh-Dole, IP, Technology Transfer
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