Category Archives: Technology Transfer

Spinning University Commercialization

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Gerald Barnett

A cluster of news articles has been published recently about how the incoming president at the University of Washington will boost technology transfer. Right off, this is rather odd.  One would think that the lead articles about a new university … Continue reading →

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Ten reasons universities should use outside IP counsel

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Gerald Barnett

I was commenting recently on the problems of bringing patent counsel into a university technology transfer operation.  Arguments in favor are cost savings, direct control over patent work, consistency, and convenience.   But the reasons for not doing so are stronger.  … Continue reading →

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Complex IP Management: Real and Imaginary

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Gerald Barnett

I want to look at a transition point in the framing of IP management. This discussion is about how management has structure. I argue that IP management is complex, and just like complex numbers, it has a real component, in … Continue reading →

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Collectivist and individualist innovation

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Gerald Barnett

I have been reading Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. It’s a series of essays critiquing the economics of a planned society, arguing instead in favor of markets and individual choices. Hayek argues that the ideals that give rise to … Continue reading →

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You can't manage what you are clueless in measuring

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Gerald Barnett

From time to time in technology transfer I hear the quip “you can’t manage what you can’t/don’t measure.” The general drift of the quip is that something has to be counted or measured to determine whether a university IP program … Continue reading →

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Partial Patterns

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Gerald Barnett

We are attracted to patterns.  A pattern appeals to our sense of order and gives us the impressing that things are following a law, can be predicted, everything in a system.   It’s all nice. Innovation, however, may suggestion a change … Continue reading →

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The imp of the improbable

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Gerald Barnett

I’m working through The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb.   The book is about the ways in which we underestimate the improbable.  More deeply, it is about how little we know about the world and how much we fool ourselves into … Continue reading →

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High risks

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Gerald Barnett

There is talk around about “high risk, high return” investments. Here is a thoroughly typical talk by Epic Ventures (web site since abandoned) to a state “Energy Advisory Board.” This is speculative investment capital talk, for the most part, from folks with … Continue reading →

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The Bozonet as a Green Cat

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Gerald Barnett

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time, Without that monument of cat, –Wallace Stevens, A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts I have been playing around with Pearltrees, which is a way of representing bookmarks graphically [ha, not … Continue reading →

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Scorching the 3d printing research community

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Gerald Barnett

Over at Open 3dp I have posted a manifesto piece on the problems I see developing in university practice in the area of 3d printing.   Being part of an open research project makes it clear how much of a problem … Continue reading →

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