Here is an article (and a link to data from the National Science Foundation) on the universities that receive the largest amounts of federal research dollars.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/27/universities-government-money_n_3165186.html

Which raises a couple of interesting questions: Should the universities receiving the highest numbers of research dollars also be those who have the best track record for commercializing technologies?  If not (and there are good reasons why that might not be the case), what should the criteria be for measuring successful expenditures?

“Gordon’s paper has received widespread attention for his provocative thesis that U.S. productivity growth is essentially over and that the average American will be no better off, and likely worse off in the future.”

http://www.innovationfiles.org/no-more-growth-lets-not-be-so-hasty-an-assessment-of-robert-j-gordons-recent-working-paper/

 

Well, not everybody’s happy about it.

(C) Carol Simpson

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/mitt-romneys-private-equity-past-puts-creative-destruction-in-spotlight/2011/12/21/gIQADbXHAP_story.html

From Kendall Wilson (via email):  “I think an interesting discussion lies around creative destruction and constantly shifting of companies, technologies and wealth, and unemployment in America. It seems that there could be a gap for law to fill, in order to protect those affected by massive job cuts.”

” … to be enacted in America over the past half-century”  (The Economist)

More about Bayh-Dole here, in The New England Journal of Medicine. A very recent and very short piece arguing for needed changes to Bayh-Dole:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1306553

As we’ll be spending quite a bit of time discussing innovation, and as an accompaniment to Dick Cox’s presentation tomorrow (2/25/14), I thought I would post some information about the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, which created opportunities for universities (and other institutions receiving federal research dollars) to own and commercialize their intellectual property.

You’ll want to pay particular attention to the rotating images in the upper-right hand corner of the page, which give some examples of novel inventions commercialized by the universities where they were developed.

http://www.b-d30.org/

I don’t think entrepreneurs think quite this badly of us …

Here is a link to one of Saras Sarasvathy’s sites where more about effectuation is explained.  There are links to several short, readable articles.  Note that this is the site for the Society for Effectual Action, which seeks not only to expand understanding about entrepreneurship, but to apply the principles Dr. Sarasvathy has uncovered to other areas, as well.

http://www.effectuation.org/learn/effectuation-101

In light of the discussion we’ve been having about economic development in Africa, I thought this link to the 2013 report by the UN Economic Commission on Africa might be meaningful.  There is a link within it to a .pdf which I will post on Sakai, in case anyone would like to read it.

http://www.uneca.org/publications/economic-report-africa-2013