Mark Mann on why processes exist and why they must continually evolve.
There is no doubt in the knowledge exchange business that there is a hell of a lot of process. Whilst undertaking it I made no secret of my loathing for it; being imprisoned by paperwork of any form is just not me. However, my loathing for paperwork should not be confused with disdain. There are very, very good reasons why processes are there. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the usual biggies:
- Organisations that fund research often have some rights to the results. The agreements can be quite vague, and sometimes your innovation comes from a combination of sources. This needs sorting out before you can start selling stuff.
- If you file a patent, when it grows you have multiple territories with various deadlines, bills, office actions, challenges, paperwork and so on. You can easily lose track of what needs doing when. If you do, you could invalidate your patent. You need process to keep on top of things.
- Researchers and academics have day jobs and responsibilities. If they were working in any other business, you would need to get the permission of your boss to even consider doing something other than your day job. Universities, though with more freedom, still want to make sure that their lectures are going to get delivered on time and to the same quality before anyone starts thinking about this knowledge exchange nonsense.
I have a big “however” here though. Processes are instigated in the present, usually to stop some disaster happening again. I am not going to highlight any occasional PR disasters universities have had when someone on the innovation side of the university has gone rogue – no need to drag that shit up again. The processes instigated as a consequence are usually very blunt instruments; they do not suit all projects in all situations. They are done for very good reasons, but deal with situations in the present and do not usually envisage what might happen in the future.
Processes should and indeed must continually evolve. Take, for instance, the relatively new area of commercialisation in the arts, humanities and social sciences. There are usually no patents at all, yet all the processes around commercialisation are designed with patents in mind. Furthermore, the intellectual property generated is often weak (though certainly not always) copyright. Does it therefore matter as much whether funders have rights to the IP generated? Your legal advisor will tell you “yes, there is a risk” and there is a small one, but the risk for your institution in the real world is much, much smaller than it would be if your IP were patentable. At the other end of the scale, how many universities have an ethics panel for commercialisation in the arts, humanities and social sciences? Sure, they all (should) have one to gain permission to do the research in the first place, but is there anyone responsible in a technology transfer office to check on the ethics of how you should sell a social science-derived intervention and do they have the necessary expertise to do so? You could really mess people’s lives up if you get this wrong.
I confess that a big part of my strategy of getting things out whilst at Oxford was to hack away at process. I would do so by going back through the institutional memory to ask why a process was put there in the first place. At the heart of all decisions were two fundamental principles:
- That the reputation of the university needed to be protected above everything else.
- That if any money were to be made from an innovation supported by the university, the university should get a fair share.
The first principle I had the deepest respect for, the latter, not quite as much. Let us face it, one of the primary aims of universities in the 21st century is to diversify its income, and commercialisation is seen as a promising route. Very, very occasionally, a university gets lucky and makes a packet from a particular patent or spinout. Usually, commercialisation earns the equivalent of pocket money. It is great as it is unencumbered income (that is, you can spend it how you like), but compared to the research budget it comes from, it is puny. At Oxford, for instance, the income it gets from the Research Excellence Framework assessment of its impact alone dwarfs the total income from Oxford University Innovation, which for most universities would be a hefty amount (about £20m per year).
Where am I going with all this? There are three points:
- Processes should be relevant to the situation – do not put everything in the same bucket. It might seem fair, but it is not. Understand what risk you are managing. Sign off low-risk decisions quickly.
- Do not design process on false assumptions. Universities largely do nt make huge amounts of money out of commercialisation. Impact assessment is worth far more money. Therefore, in most cases universities should pile it high and sell it cheap.
- Do not forget to look to the future. By all means strip redundant processes away, but do not forget that you will probably need new ones too, but do try and make them efficient.
