Universities spend so much energy trying to get huge payoffs from a handful of their researchers’ technology developments that lots of other technologies never get a chance to be patented, licensed, commercialized or used.
That’s the conclusion of researchers from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which released a report this month called “Commercializing University Innovations: A Better Way.”
“We are now at a critical point in which the incentives of some universities may lead to the codification of a system that will inhibit rather than promote commercialization of technological breakthroughs,” said Robert Litan, vice president for Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation and a senior fellow in the Economic Studies and the Global Studies programs at the Brookings Institution, in a statement.
Much of the technology transfer process has become too bureaucracy-heavy and centralized, the researchers found.
They recommend that universities try a variety of paths to get network and other technologies licensed. These include:
· Free agency, which involves giving faculty members freedom to choose a third party to negotiate license deals (or even do it themselves);
· Regional alliances, under which schools would work together to commercialize technologies
· Internet-based approaches, which use the Web to connect technology developers and those wanting to license technologies (the Kauffman Foundation funds the iBridge Network , which is one such system for doing this); and
· Faculty loyalty, which basically means sacrificing intellectual property rights to the researchers and figuring many of them will reward the university down the road both financially and by sticking around.
The researchers also urged the federal government, which funds much of the research conducted at schools, to encourage universities to use such licensing methods as these.
