Is Academia Becoming an "Idea Graveyard?"

PBS NewsHour:

Question: Science and technology don't seem to be producing the jobs or economic improvement many would hope. What often gets forgotten is that many science and technology ideas are developed in academia where they are owned by the institutions. The schools are not businesses to turn them into products and businesses have a harder time making money on ideas they don't own. So these intellectual property portfolios become idea graveyards. What if the rules changed so that the individuals who came up with the ideas could own a majority stake in their own ideas? Could they not then follow it out of academia and out to product? Seems like that would start more businesses, give universities more money (some of something as opposed to all of nothing), and even take some of the weight off of long term government support for science. Am I being naive to think that we could fix science and improve the economy?

Paul Solman:Yes, I think you are being naive. I know quite a few people at universities- professors and students both - and more and more of them talk about commercializing their research, or are actively engaged in doing so. Ideas do not seem to be trapped in the groves of academe. Just the opposite. If you think I'm wrong, readers, I trust you to let me know in the Comments section below.

A much more important hurdle to innovation may be the U.S. patent system, strengthened last week by the jury judgment against Samsung from infringing Apple patents. A number of economists have written about the anti-competitive constraints imposed by the patent system in the past decade, including Adam Jaffe of Brandeis and Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School ("Innovation and its Discontents") and two economists at Washington University, St. Louis: Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 9, 2012 1:12 AM
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