Whether patents and technology should be transferred from colleges, universities and other academic institutions and whether professors should be allowed to establish companies has been the subject of much heated debate recently. The issue of recusal has also caused many experts and academics to demand sunshine legislation.
In addition to teaching, academic research and counseling, university professors should also assist with industrial innovation and help improve competitiveness. National development would benefit greatly if professors and their postgraduate students were better able to transform knowledge into economic power by creating new types of output value.
Product prototypes are created through theoretical derivation, the creation of algorithms and product tests. However, the technology gap between a prototype and a market-ready product is often hard to bridge.
Inadequate funding and oranization mean that many colleges and universities are unable to overcome such obstacles. This means much research only appears in special publications. Such technology cannot be applied to products through technology transfers or business, which means its benefits are limited.
In the US, Japan and the EU, it is quite common for full-time university professors to set up companies. In these countries, professors well-versed in the latest technologies lead students in the real life application of algorithms and in product R&D. This means that such countries have more chances to benefit economically. It is also beneficial in securing patents and technology transfers.
Data from the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Intellectual Property Office shows that in 2008, the US and Japan obtained 185,224 and 215,249 patents respectively, while Taiwan only obtained 42,283.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is an interesting case study. In February, the US business research institution, the Kauffmann Foundation, released a report entitled “Entrepreneurial Impact: The role of MIT.” This said that if all companies founded by teachers, students and graduates of MIT were put together and counted as a nation, it would be the 17th biggest economy in the world. The report also said MIT teachers, students and graduates have founded a total of 25,800 companies with about 3.3 million employees, and average annual sales of US$2 trillion.
Some worry that universities will lose their autonomy if they get too close to business and that professors will confuse their roles and encounter conflicts of interest. However, if suitable measures are put in place, if schools become partners in companies and if patents and technology transfer licensing fees were established, professors with specialized knowledge and business acumen could turn their knowledge into output value, which would be a good thing.
Such a business model could encourage people to take out more patents of a higher quality, ensuring Taiwan exports more technology products than it imports.
We lack outlets for creativity, and the results of our patents and technology transfers are limited. These problems have been discussed for some time, and the attitude of the Ministry of Education and the National Science Council, the institutions in charge of guiding public and private universities, is now crucial.
In this age of knowledge-based economies, there are only three choices: To be creative and innovative, to blindly follow others or be eliminated due to a lack of competitiveness. Taiwan is full of creative people. Which one of these three choices are we going to make?
Luo Ren-chuan is a professor of electrical engineering at National Taiwan University.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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