Get it Moving

Too many patents don't make it out of universities and into the marketplace, write Ed Paisley and Sean Pool at the Center for American Progress' Science Progress site. While Paisley and Pool note there are many reasons for that limited movement out of the lab, the main one, they say, "is that the federal funding on which much university research depends does not encourage universities to prioritize the commercialization of the resulting technology." The authors suggest that the government should reserve a small percentage of research funding to support the early stages of commercialization, that a program be created to better facilitate coordination between researchers and businesspeople, and that another portion of funding be used to promote entrepreneurship in universities. "Smart federal investments can help many other research universities identify and capitalize on their competitive strengths," Paisley and Pool add.