Why is it OK that U of I is 1,000 times better than SIUC?
There is no link to the article on "The Southern" webpage, but let's blog on it anyway because it is interesting.
Calab Hale wrote the article in the Sunday and he got most things right. Good work Calab! There is a quote near the end of the article that kind of bother's me, Dale Wittmer chair of SIUC's ME (Mechanical Engineering) says according to the article that "The University of Illinois, can move 1,000 times faster than SIUC on an idea." Now I hear that Dr. Wittmer is a really good guy and I think he is right, U of I can move 1,000 times faster than SIUC on patents. But why is this OK?
I looking into this problem a while back and sent out some emails with the following suggestions -
Give professors job credit for patents. Should be at least equal to a paper in a major publication at job review time.
Figure out how to get more patents through the system. If this means hiring a patent lawyer or patent agent to drive this so be it.
Manage the process. Make metrics and keep results. Drive for improvement.
BTW - all these ideas are being implemented other places and are a list of best practices that are successfully used elsewhere.
2 comments:
Peter, the patent issue is perhaps a little more complicated than you may imagine, even though you have been successful at it. I am aware of long, expensive fights over patents that ended up with zero return to the "inventor" or the University. The reason this did not happen to you, I presume, is because you knew the value of what you were trying to patent.
It is hard for SIUC's "patent office" to evaluate the merits of a patent application and we have been burned financially before.
I remember asking an industry person at a conference why her company was not interested in one of our faculty's way of making something. She rolled her eyes and said, "His method is unique, but more expensive than the way we do it now."
Not only are you difficult, you're also a lousy typist.
;-)
Are you thinking that doing patents isn't hard for everyone? I have a few and it is very difficult to invent things and far harder to commercialize them.
The SIU patent office is incompetent to evaluate patents, that is clear. But even if you get the best experts on this earth, most of your patents are going to earn nothing. But that doesn't dismiss that the patent office performing poorly.
Clearly the force of personality of the inventor is more important in the patent office than the possible payoff from the invention. This means that the Cal Meyer's of the world get patents and other more worth inventions are passed by. But isn't that just a statement about the incompetence of the patent office?
Like drilling wildcat wells, most are going to be dry. The one well the comes in pays for everything and more. I like to call this "if you don't play you can't win."
SIUC faces a long hard road of systematically fixing each problem area one by one (or just continuing to suck). I'm doing this at work everyday, it is called leadership. Patents are just one problem, but almost every area at SIU could use work.
Do you think that the management of SIUC should fix this problem or just continue to ignore it? We agree it is a hard problem, but does that excuse doing nothing, not studying best practices, and failing by default? You realize that there are several people who are being paid to do this work and they are doing it poorly?
SIUC needs someone to drop a Billion dollars into the system. This is the only place to get it, so I think it should be pursued.
I'm different than most of you, I do this hard stuff for a living. If the current management of SIUC can't address problems like this, then need to be replaced. If you want success, and you relentless chase it, you have a pretty reasonable chance of success.
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