[EAS] Fostering Stewardship and Building Value
Peter J. Kindlmann
pjk at design.eng.yale.edu
Tue Nov 14 18:33:56 EST 2006
Dear Colleagues -
>The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 permitted U.S. universities to patent
>federally-funded research. Did this make universities overnight
>"hotbeds of innovation," or has it, as some critics feared,
>subverted research culture and inhibited vital information sharing?
Thus begins an excellent and highly recommended review at
<http://www.researchoninnovation.org/WordPress/?p=68> of the only
book-length study of the subject I know of, "Ivory Tower and
Industrial Innovation: University-Industry Technology Transfer before
and after the Bayh-Dole Act," by David C. Mowery, Richard R. Nelson,
Bhaven N. Sampat, and Arvids A. Ziedonis (Stanford University Press,
2004).
The subject of university intellectual property, and its uses, has
occupied universities even before those 25 years since Bayh-Dole
became effective in 1981. Some have learned case by case, probably
the only way to do it, others have kept a doctrinaire distance until
more recently, and are thus behind the curve. Both camps usually lean
toward oversimplified views, the protectors of free scientific
exchange understanding too little about the rationale of business,
and the proponents of entrepreneurship paying too little attention to
the effects of their enthusiasm on research climate and the fragile
psychology of open intellectual exchange, so important to education
and to research progress itself.
Innovative business has its own clearly understandable motivations
and excitement, and it is more readily plausible to students these
days. I learned a lot about that in all the years that I split my
existence between consulting and teaching. There is also an
intellectual excitement in research, but it needs more shelter from
distractions and is ever more difficult to communicate to students.
All too frequently, graduate students are just "put to work" without
any attempt to communicate to them a sense of their role in research,
of the concept of becoming a "steward of the discipline"
<http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/postings/743.html>. Often their
thesis advisors had themselves no such introduction to stewardship.
Personally speaking, I was shocked when I first had a senior EE major
propose that I sign a confidentiality agreement regarding a possible
topic for a senior project (I didn't - how could he conceivably think
I would?), or heard of graduate students cautioned by their thesis
advisors not to discuss their research too openly.
Yet this research secretiveness is also fuelled by the fierce
competition for federal dollars
<http://chronicle.com/jobs/2001/05/2001052502c.htm>. Further, there
is the intrusion, under Bayh-Dole, of overly broad patents into
further research by others. The so-called "research exemption" is
supposed to prevent such conflict, but many, including the book's
authors, feel it is drawn to restrictively.
There is a growing literature, often numbingly detailed, on how
universities are being transformed in the "knowledge age" by these
links to the outside world. "As the Walls of Academia Are Tumbling
Down" by Werner Z. Hirsch and Luc E. Weber, eds. (Economica Press,
2002), is a fairly accessible selection of essays by generally
university-affiliated authors.
Please read the review mentioned at the start of this mailing. It is
my hope that enthusiasm for progress, the lure of becoming something
else, the desire to make universities more like business, doesn't
meld universities and business so that the most valuable attributes
of each are lost. The world is full of "bi-lobal" situations where
averaging would lose most that is truly valuable. --PJK
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