UPDATED AT 14:08 PM EDT
Time to break the town-and-gown barrier
Time to break the town-and-gown barrier
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Friday, February 08, 2008
For lots of regions, especially declining ones, universities have come to be seen as economic saviours, at least since people started talking about Stanford University's role in the rise of California's Silicon Valley. One leading Valley entrepreneur, asked for "the secret" of the area's success, replied, tongue-in-cheek: "Take one great research university. Add venture capital. Shake vigorously."
Businesses, governments and economists talk of getting local universities more involved in technology transfer, commercial innovation and start-ups. "If only our university could be more like Stanford and MIT," they say.
The idea actually sells universities short. It oversells their commercial role and underestimates their other contributions. There are only a few instances where universities have played a major role in high-tech development — certainly Silicon Valley and Greater Boston, as well as Austin, North Carolina's Research Triangle and Waterloo, Ont.
It's more common for regions to export technology their universities create. Economist Michael Fogarty has found that while labs in Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland generate plenty of patents, most of them find their commercial uses in Boston, San Francisco, New York or Tokyo.
Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where I taught for nearly two decades, is a centre for computer science and software innovation and has produced its share of stars in these fields. But little of the benefit spills over to Pittsburgh. Instead, talent is sucked up by the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Google. Kevin Stolarick, a colleague of mine at the Martin Prosperity Institute, says a university and a regional economy are like a transmitter and a receiver: Amping up the transmitter's signal won't result in development if the region's receivers are broken.
As well, pushing a university to take on more commercial innovation can hinder what it does well, which is to add to the pool of science and technology from which private actors can draw. Researchers at Harvard and Columbia have shown that when university research becomes overly commercially oriented, it becomes more likely that scientists (or their private backers) will seek to restrict access to valuable findings, which slows down progress in key fields such as biotechnology.
Besides, the university is not a one-note samba. Its role goes beyond technology. Economic development today turns on three Ts — technology, talent and tolerance — and universities nurture all of them.
A 2006 study at the University of North Carolina found that universities influence economic growth more by building human capital — through students and faculty members — than by doing research and development. Great universities, with their star faculty members and standout research departments, have a magnetic effect, attracting outside companies, venture capitalists, laboratories and research institutes.
The syndrome of the "academic rock star" covered in a Globe Focus article last weekend (which cited me as one example) springs from that effect, but it also indicates the way university life is being commodified. It parallels the superstar, "winner-take-all" labour market that Cornell professor Robert Frank documents, which is not a good thing. Instead of a system where a few benefit from the work of the many (as all scholars stand on each other's shoulders), we need a system that recognizes and rewards contributions broadly.
In an idea-driven age, royalties rather than rents are the key economic output. We need new mechanisms to share them. It's what the Hollywood writers strike is all about. I am personally very worried about the commodification of creativity and the intellect inside and outside the academy.
