Campus Companies and the University

There is much impetus at the moment to increase the number so companies coming out of the university sector that are based on the technology created in the university. Governments across Europe and indeed further afield are anxious to try and harness the creative and innovative expertise in the universities to increase employment and move new companies into the market that have a position further up the value chain. It is a good theory but it does cause a few wrinkles when it comes to implementation. Its all down to incentives. Most universities are dependant on the funding of the state to keep the doors open. If governments incentivise campus companies then technologies will be pushed in that direction. When governments incentivised licensing there were very few new companies coming out of the universities. Does this mean the technologies were not there. Probably not true. What it does suggest is that some companies that are formed now are doing so with technology that may be better placed to be in an existing company. As so many start ups fail it just seems to be delaying the commercial exploitation of technologies by putting some of them into campus companies. The key is to get the funding of the companies right from the start. I think it is important for incentives from government be more nuanced then just saying a company is good just by virtue of existence. Incentives should be for a start up from the university have finance before it starts from genuine independent sources, not just the 3 fs "family, friends and fools". If this is there, then people who have skin in the game will get it going or get it shut quickly, avoiding the dithering of failed entities limping along denying the university and the community access to important technology. If future funding is not successful then the technology reverts and should be auctioned at the first opportunity. These should be government run auctions across the state. That way companies with no capacity to add value will be found out quickly because buyers will just wait for companies to fail and buy the technology later. If however the company itself has value then it will survive and show itself to be investable. That's what the government want, that's what the universities really want, and that's what is the best thing to do, so we should do it

Univerisites; what is going on there?

The university is a strange beast. It always seems to me that it is a loose federation of badly run states looking to out argue each other about the merits of their interpretation of the constitution while their citizens just try and get by without incurring the wrath of the ruling classes. Its a bit if a stretch but not too much.
The key player in the university is the tenured lecturer. All the other elements, the careers office, the exams office, even the President, cluster around this cohort of active researchers and teachers. Yet they have little or no control over them except in the immediate sense, and for many years the tenured lecturer is doing all he or she can to avoid these people.
Is this a problem, well in my view it is the problem and the benefit of a university.
Because no-one is truly in charge of the important stuff, you end up doing what it is that you want to do. By doing that you create something unexpected, derive new knowledge. But it is a system reliant on trust and fellowship, which is where the problem exists. Fellowship is not strong in the university. Academics and admin staff are often at cross purposes and contact is limited and functional. To get the best out of a university you need to put someone in charge who doesn't want to control it all but wants to empower ALL the staff to work WITH each other. Let them define the goals. If you can do that. The university is a genuine international resource for any community, filled with drive and collective ambition to create for the people who pay for them. Fail to do that and you have failed the people who provide for the university in the first place. So lecturers of the world and university administrators, lets rip up the years of agendas and petty squabbles, now of all times we can little afford it. Let's just talk to each other about what we can do together and lets buy into each others dreams a little. Let our leadership skills lead each other and we can use of huge privilege of working in a university to make a college of the minds.

Whatever Muse May Strike

On frosty mornings like we are having at the moment we don't have a choice but to clear the windscreen of ice. [Mind you this morning I did meet a woman driving the wrong side of the road in a complete white-out windscreen. It was like watching a blind walrus trying to scale a cliff. Funny to watch but don't get too close.....but I digress]. With these frosty windscreens I tend to turn on the car engine for a minute or two before I get the kids in to clear the wind screen. I also use a scraper as well, before you all call Al Gore on me so it's just to finish off the job. I go inside and get the troops ready then off we go. Cars can idle, that's the point. They can just sit there and keep chugging away, no turmoil or inner demons for them. Just sit and spew CO2 into the atmosphere.
A mind can't just idle along like a car engine in the driveway. Maybe that is the true element of humanity. Like nature itself, the mind abhors a vacuum. The few minutes of solitude can inundate the little grey cells with enough racing thoughts and ideas to fill ten novels and file a thousand patents, well maybe a few dozen anyway. The Greeks could see this, so they gave us the muses. A man was driven by whatever muse may strike. And that is how this blog will work. No major underpinning philosophy, no change the world ideology or information to make your "Remember the milk" ipod app work twice as fast, well maybe some but not much. This blog is about the random ramblings of a university bureaucrat with exposure to ideas all day and a place to unload my thoughts on life and the world as I see it, whichever muse may strike!