Category Archives: Innovation

A sense of proportion–4

Posted on December 6, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

To lay it out in bullet points, the now dominant university patent-based approach to research inventions defaulting to exclusive licenses: fragments invention platforms with no way to restore them attracts speculative investors while pushing away companies raises barriers to early … Continue reading →

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Patents, Medicines, Public Funding–2

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

We have distinguished four sorts of medical interventions–prevention, cure, facilitation, and alleviation. We have also argued that from a public health point of view, prevention and cure are tops, and facilitation and alleviation are great when they support prevention and … Continue reading →

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Patents, Medicines, Public Funding–1

Posted on May 14, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

Let’s look at four areas of health “technology”: preventions, cures, facilitators, and alleviators. A prevention does just that–prevents an adverse health condition. A vaccine, for instance, prevents a disease (for many, and sometimes with adverse reactions, even deaths). Or, regular … Continue reading →

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Research Enterprise Policy Issues: fragmentation of noisy research

Posted on April 10, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

We have looked at noisy research and quiet research. Policy folks don’t much care, but it appears to make a difference whether research is conducted quietly or noisily. In quiet research, variations are explored, applications considered, data assembled, evidence checked … Continue reading →

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Research Enterprise Policy Issues: noisy work, quiet work

Posted on April 9, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

Let’s discuss practice around research, invention, and enterprise. Let’s start distinguish quiet work and noisy work. When someone is doing unprovoked research on their own–in the proverbial laboratory (institutional) or garage (unaffiliated, gadgeteer, entrepreneur), their work tends to be quiet. … Continue reading →

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Fantasy depictions of technology transfer, 3

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

Despite all this discussion of university fantasy depictions of a technology transfer process, their invocation of the Bayh-Dole Act as their justification, and the reality that actual practice is nowhere like their depictions of process, success, or history, there are … Continue reading →

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Fantasy depictions of technology transfer, 2

Posted on March 12, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

The standard accounts of the “technology transfer process” seem so clear and plausible that you may well believe they are generally accurate, even if there might be “technical details” that they gloss over. But these standard accounts are largely, almost … Continue reading →

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The new rule

Posted on January 29, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

I once created a game I called “Tradition.” I was trying to find games with simple rule sets. In Tradition, the only rule was you could make a rule or make a move. At the outset, then, the only move … Continue reading →

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Inventor freedom and the unexpected model of innovation, 1

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

Consider an alternative to the present university administrator mania for patenting. Let’s start with inventor freedom and then look once more at what I call Vannevar Bush’s unexpected model of innovation. There are difficulties in the effort. First, the social … Continue reading →

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Vannever Bush on the control of scientists

Posted on January 25, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

Here’s Vannever Bush on the institutional desire to control scientists: There is nothing more deadly than control of the activities of scientists and engineers by men who do not really understand, but think they do or must at least give … Continue reading →

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