> This is advice for people who have done scientific research at a university and are considering starting a company to commercialize it.
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor?
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor?
That the research is the property of the state because they paid for the PhD?
First, many research universities are private, so aren't funded by the state.
Second, most research projects are funded by grants not from the state - it comes from industry and places like that.
Third, even if they are funding it, why isn't funding the creation of companies (employers!) a good thing for the state?
And the research, presumably.
> First, many research universities are private, so aren't funded by the state.
They don't get funding from the state, even if they are private entities? Are you absolutely sure?
> Second, most research projects are funded by grants not from the state - it comes from industry and places like that.
Again: 100% sure, your "most" applies?
> Third, even if they are funding it, why isn't funding the creation of companies (employers!) a good thing for the state?
It might be, it might not be. The company may generate lots of taxes, the company also may just move to a tax haven and tell society to screw off.
It simply states some facts and corrects parents misconceptions about how research is funded.
1. Universities can and regularly do file patents, including public unis and including research funded with federal grants. See the Bayh-Dole Act.
2. Researchers can and often do choose not to publish research or research output (eg code) that might be commercially valuable.
3. Even the papers, including open access ones that can download and read for free, are almost never public domain.
[0] https://www.nibib.nih.gov/research-funding/concept-clinic-co... [1] https://sbir.nih.gov/
Oh please.
"In the movie Steve Jobs, a character asks, “So how come 10 times in a day I read ‘Steve Jobs is a genius?’” The great man reputation that envelops Jobs is just part of a larger mythology of the role that Silicon Valley, and indeed the entire U.S. private sector, has played in technology innovation. We idolize tech entrepreneurs like Jobs, and credit them for most of the growth in our economy. But University of Sussex economist Mariana Mazzucato, who has just published a new U.S. edition of her book, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, makes a timely argument that it is the government, not venture capitalists and tech visionaries, that have been heroic.
“Every major technological change in recent years traces most of its funding back to the state,” says Mazzucato. Even “early stage” private-sector VCs come in much later, after the big breakthroughs have been made. For example, she notes, “The National Institutes of Health have spent almost a trillions dollars since their founding on the research that created both the pharmaceutical and the biotech sectors–with venture capitalists only entering biotech once the red carpet was laid down in the 1980s. We pretend that the government was at best just in the background creating the basic conditions (skills, infrastructure, basic science). But the truth is that the involvement required massive risk taking along the entire innovation chain: basic research, applied research and early stage financing of companies themselves.” The Silicon Valley VC model, which has typically dictated that financiers exit within 5 years or so, simply isn’t patient enough to create game changing innovation."
That every company can be traced back to the state if you look far enough? So they should all be owned by the state?
> Second, most research projects are funded by grants not from the state - it comes from industry and places like that.
It does not imply everything should be owned by the state al all. It however imply that people really like to lie about this point for ideological reasons and in order to demonize everything state.
(Presumably it's the university that actually owns any patents from grad students or faculty [though they do share revenue with faculty inventors I believe] and they in turn license them to Google or other companies. So it's more of a transfer of wealth from the government to universities than to companies.)
This is an intention incentive created by the government to grow the overall enconomy, rewarding the risk takers (universities that hire PIs that do world-changing research).