Helping commercialization

A couple of recent articles highlight the issue of increasing the commercialization of good ideas.

Steve Lohr at the New York Times writes on the growing use of patent auctions (Now, an Invention Inventors Will Like):

Wrangling over patents is beginning to move out of the courtroom and into the marketplace. A flurry of new companies and investment groups has sprung up to buy, sell, broker, license and auction patents. And venture capital and private equity is starting to pour into the field.
The arrival of these new business-minded players, according to patent experts and economists, could lead to a robust marketplace for patents, where value is determined not so much by court judgments but by buyers and sellers, perhaps, someday, like eBay.

Well, Steve, maybe not like the eBay/Skype deal -- but you have the right idea.

Vivek Wadhwa and Robert E. Litan have an piece over at Business Week that focuses on the technology transfer problem (Turning Research into Inventions and Jobs):

Rather than wait decades for the new basic science to trickle out of the Ivory Tower and into products, a mechanism to quickly assess inventions and build associated companies with real potential would show real returns and major job growth within as little as one or two years.

Their solution is to turn scientists into entrepreneurs:

If we want to create jobs, we must first train scientists how to start companies. Tom Katsouleas, dean of Duke University's engineering school, has a potential solution, called PhD+. For PhDs who wish to start companies and have marketable technologies, Katsouleas proposes that the federal government provide funding for training in entrepreneurship to teach the lab geeks how to get along better in the startup world.

Interesting, but I think a third-best solution. Yes we can do a better job at helping those scientists who also have the aptitude and willingness become entrepreneurs. But beware of simply invoking the Peter Principle of promoting people beyond their competence. A second best solution is to ramp up the patent auctions, as describe above.

The best solution comes at the end of the Wadhwa and Litan piece:

We also need to rethink the importance we ascribe to technology licensing. It should be subordinated to entrepreneurship as a scheme for pushing technology into the world. Instead of being rewarded for generating license revenue, technology transfer offices should be measured on the number of startups they help spawn, and by the employment and revenue created by these startups.

This solution attacks the problem at multiple levels. It puts the emphasis on the outcomes (spin-offs) rather than the intermediate product (more researchers as business people). It widens the focus to multiple activities -- licensing and patent sales are part of the spin-off process. Finally, it is applicable to non-science based innovations as well as science-based ones.

In my view, anything that broadens the technology transfer mindset to innovation-creation is a good thing. That includes both increased patent sales (and other alternative financing mechanisms) to spur commercialization and encouraging more entrepreneurship. Neither is the silver bullet. Both are a step forward.