I recently
moderated a panel talk at a unique conference with Academia and Industry
leaders as a key Unicon. The focus of this conference was
enabling collaboration between industry and universities and do justice to the
role this partnership has as an imperative for disruptive leadership. This blog
is dedicated to give a bit of a glimpse into this panel talk and some thoughts
that emerged from speaking with some amazing people in this conference-
I wanted to start by bringing forward 3 points about this
exciting and relevant panel discussion.
Few years back, I used to encourage my team to be
well-versed with dealing with change, and staying ahead of it. In today's
times, the narrative has evolved from being just change to that of
"transformation", which is orders of magnitude higher degree than
change. Bringing change is rather easy, but bringing in transformation requires
a large scale of innovation.
Most progressive organizations cannot innovate by
being confined to the 4 walls of the organization. They need able partners.
Universities are often perceived as major resources in a company's innovation
strategy.
Second point is more of a conversation that I having with
one of the high profile patent attorney and his views of the university
relationships. His view was that it really hasn’t been all that helpful for
larger companies in the tech space to partner with universities from an IP
development point-of-view as it has been for hiring and the PR development
activities. Given that this person had worked with large corporates and with
large universities like Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), i couldn't
simply ignore the point of view he as bringing forward. One of the data he
cited was around a
study MIT did with ~25 companies running close to 100 projects with
university. The data suggested that though 50% of projects were thought of as
having major outcomes but only 20% could really lead to major impacts on the
company that participated in collaboration. So there is a certain
outcome-impact gap that exists in the way university and industry relations are
being executed at the moment.
My third point is around expectations from this panel talk.
To keep things simple, as a captain of this ship (panel talk!), I was really
targeting 2 outcomes from this panel talk-
1. Acknowledgement of key issues around Technology Transfer
Conflicts.
2. Design the way forward
Focus of the talk:
Given the outcomes expected from the 30-40 minutes of
conversation with esteemed panellists (which included a Senior Technologist
from NetApp, a Senior Patent Engineer from Texas Instruments and a seasoned legal
counsel), the talk really focused on these questions-
1) Why is Technology and IP
transfer policy important in today’s context?
2) What are the key challenges
faced by Industry and Universities with respect to Technology Transfer?
3) What are the reasons for
tussle between inventors and universities ?
4) How do the Technology
Transfer policies change between Tier 1 and Tier 2 institutions?
5) How do you compare these
policies to those in developed economies such as US, Europe etc?
6) How can organizations and
academia set up a structured program to handle technology transfer conflicts –
what are the best practices?
7) Can Industry and Universities
collectively create a standard policy to handle technology transfer conflicts?
Key takeaways:
1) University and Industry
relationships usually consists of many dimensions. In order of popularity, the
most obvious dimension is that of hiring the talent. Next up is Branding. And
arguably the most complex dimension is that of building a successful technology
oriented relations.
2) There are real, on-the-ground
issues that exists (some of which are covered in below points) that discourages
both universities and industry to pursue partnership with each other.
3) There is a good deal of
difference between what motivates universities and industry and this difference
plays a huge role in ensuring the eventual success of the relationship. For
universities, publishing research papers and producing intellectual property
assumes higher purpose. For industries, its largely about business outcomes.
4) In one of the arguments,
universities (not all, but selectively) were equated to be playing the role of patent
trolls. For starters, as dictionary defines, a patent troll is “a company that obtains the rights to one or
more patents in order to profit by means of licensing or litigation, rather
than by producing its own goods or service.”
a. Progressive universities
focus a lot on research and one of the common outcomes from research is an
intellectual property, which often takes the form or a patent or copyright or a
publication right. Universities can then choose to exercise their right on the
intellectual property in many different ways. One of the business-oriented ways
to find the buyer companies for the generated IP with the sole intention to
maximize the profits. There is nothing grossly wrong about universities thinking
about profit but this act becomes debatable when larger societal implications
takes backseat. One may argue that universities aren’t the sole protector of societal
interests but being originator of research comes with a certain responsibility.
5) Following on from the last
point, which ended rather inconclusively, there is an apt discussion around
granting exclusive rights to IP or non-exclusive rights.
a. In an exclusive
licence, the parties agree that no other person/legal entity can exploit
the relevant IP, except the licensee.
b. On the other hand, a Non-Exclusive
Licence grants to the licensee the right to use the IP, but on a
non-exclusive basis. That means that the licensor can still exploit the same IP
and he/she can also allow other licensees to exploit the same intellectual
property.
c. Being aware of these
licensing types and with the intention of maximizing the overall impact of the
invention, universities could choose to grant non-exclusive license that would further
allow many parties to gain from the invention.
6) There was also an interesting
view on how companies are choosing to liaison with universities. From the
business side, one straight-forward way is to leverage university originated
invention. However, there are several other ways to engage. Some of the
visionary organizations are leveraging research potential of universities to
gain knowhow about the futuristic technologies and help them prepare many years
into the future.
7) Few more ways for industry
and academia to engage include (but not limited to)-
a. Sponsored Infrastructure/lab
b. Training & Curriculum
Design
c. Consulting
d. Sponsored Research
e. Open Research
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