On Tue, 17 Sep 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> David Eppstein ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> : > One exception is SBIR grants which, instead of to large institutions, can
> : > go to a small company (as long as it can be legitamated) with a little as
> : > one employee. Hint, hint, hint.
>
> : If you're hinting that institutional employees form small companies on
> : the side in order to get freer access to their grant money, my
> : institution at least looks very skeptically at such arrangements.
>
> <snip>
>
> Soon after I started my residency, I ran into severe problems with my
> research. I eventually spoke to someone from another department about the
> dead end I faced and he said he saw nothing wrong with my calculations.
> What he then said floored me. He suggested that if I wanted further
> assistance that I could use the services of an "institute" inside the
> department--for a fee. That was indirectly confirmed by another student
> several months later.
I don't know about up where you are, but in the States, they often call
these "institutes" by a different name: _incubators_. They are ready-made
space-for-lease buildings, with suites of rooms, including labs, and may
or may not be organized and built by institutions of higher learning. They
do exist and probably maybe around 100-200 in the USA. Sometimes they even
provide seed money. Then, your group goes in. Gets its funding. And part
of the contract deal is that the institution gets patent rights. In phase
II, after demonstration feasibility, the project expands and gets
commercialized. That's assuming it succeeds. If it fails....obviously, the
people and the equipment get buldozered out into the dumpster and they
look for new "tenants."
> Academic advice which used to be rendered freely, without cost, by
> professors (maybe because one did that sort of thing in an instituion
> of learning?) has become just another commodity to peddle on the open
> market.
There is no ivory tower any more. "X" makes money or its worthless.
Priceless has no meaning; Sorry, I thought it was a mistake for the
Taliban to blow up those religeous statues -- where was it? -- over in
Afghanistan?
> I know of one Canadian government department that used the contractors at
> one of its facilities to circumvent its own bureaucracy. If someone
> needed a piece of equipment quickly, it was easier to get a contractor to
> purchase it and reimburse it for the hardware than it was to follow normal
> procedures.
Or buy/sell and leaseback arrangements. Complete with tax preference
benefits.
Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
-----------------------------------------
| Science career information website: |
| http://www.magpage.com/~arthures |
-----------------------------------------
This reduced the aquisition time by at least a factor of 3,
> if not more.
>
> --
> ***************************************** "We set sail on this new sea
> * Dr. Bernhard Michael Jatzeck, P. Eng. * because there is new knowledge
> * * to be gained and new rights to
> * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * be won, and they must be won
> ***************************************** and used for the progress of
> all people."
>
> John F. Kennedy at Rice
> University, Houston, Texas,
> September 12, 1962
>
.
.
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the
problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at:
. http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ .
=================================================================
