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Category Archives: History
How we got here in twelve chapters, 3
3. Chasing federally supported inventions Federal agencies develop a variety of approaches to inventions made in contracted work. University research foundations make a pitch for management of federally supported inventions, but are resisted by Public Health Service policies. As a … Continue reading
Posted in Bayh-Dole, History, Policy, Technology Transfer
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How we got here in twelve chapters, 2
2. The equities University faculty develop an approach to patents—mostly, keep them out of the university, use Research Corporation or a local research foundation. Agents provide services, take on the costs and risks, and share upsides with inventors and institutions. … Continue reading
Posted in Freedom, History, Policy, Technology Transfer
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How we got here in twelve chapters, 1
A few days ago I sat down to work on a curriculum for innovation and found myself distracted by the outline of a book-length treatment of the development of university “technology transfer.” I emerged a few hours later with a … Continue reading
Posted in Freedom, History, Policy, Technology Transfer
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University claims on non-supported inventive work
In a note on the Guide to Bayh-Dole, a reader asks: One point I have been particularly concerned with is the position taken by virtually all of the universities that if a university employee is hired as a consultant to … Continue reading
Posted in Bayh-Dole, Freedom, History, Policy, Technology Transfer
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Who hoards technology in the Ivory Tower?
University of Washington president Michael Young gave a ten-minute talk in February 2012 at the opening of a business incubator on the UW campus. The talk is fascinating for the narrative it presents for UW to attempt to flip faculty and student … Continue reading
Posted in Bayh-Dole, History, Policy, Technology Transfer
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The University Conversion Experience, Part 2
In Part I of “The University Conversion Experience” I described the problems faced when an organization supported by a university becomes trapped in claims by the university administration that the university owns the organization for having supported it. In Part … Continue reading
What do the hawks say?
What do the hawks say? You know, parody is a permissible fair use.
Be Advocates for the Doers
Universities prior to Bayh-Dole generally pushed invention management to external agents. These agents took on the expense, the complexity, the competitive issues, and the liability. These agents allowed universities to avoid direct conflicts of interest between managing the research environment … Continue reading
Posted in Freedom, History, Policy, Technology Transfer
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The basic researcher as poet-maker
In 1953, the NSF in its third annual report publishes a discussion of basic research. In its opening paragraph, the NSF associates scientific creativity with that of “poet or painter”: A worker in basic scientific research is motivated by a … Continue reading
Posted in History, Innovation, Sponsored Research
Tagged Bacon, basic research, poet, Sidney
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Adam Smith’s Innovation by Division of Labor
Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow describes what he calls “What You See Is All There Is”: The combination of a coherence-seeking System 1 with a lazy System 2 implies that System 2 will endorse many intuitive beliefs, which … Continue reading
Posted in 3D Printing, History, Innovation, Policy
Tagged Adam Smith, division of labor, gadgeteer, Kahneman, tinkerer, warfarin
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