(2012-06-20) Welsh University Incubator

Matt Welsh thinks universities should form/host Incubator-s to accelerate Technology Transfer. The academic research process is incredibly inefficient when it comes to producing real products that shape the world. It can take decades for a good research idea to turn into a product... In theory, academics are supposed to be patenting their ideas, and companies are supposed to come along and license the patents and turn them into real products. However, I am not aware of a single project from a computer science department that ever been commercialized through this route. This approach is more commonplace in fields like biotech, but in computer science it is rarely done... A far more common (and successful) approach is for academics to spin out their own startups. However, this involves a high degree of risk (potentially career-ending for pre-tenure faculty)... What I'd like to see is a university with a startup incubator attached to it, taking all of the best ideas and turning them into companies, with a large chunk of the money from successful companies feeding back into the university to fund the next round of great ideas. This could be a perpetual motion machine to drive research... Typically, when a startup spins off, the university gets a tiny slice of the pie, and the venture capitalists -- who fill the much-needed funding gap -- reap most of the benefits. But why not close the air gap between the research lab and the startup? I think they should host a broader Work Community.

Mar'2013: Michael Carney on USC's incubator. While the university seems to recognize the opportunity at hand and its role in fostering the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, the final product was full of unnecessary compromises. The good news is that this is just version one, and the university has every opportunity to adjust its model. A sterling example is available just a few hundred miles up the coast (Stanford University). (Note that Technology Transfer doesn't seem to be a significant goal here.)