By: Dr. Phyllis Speser, Foresight Founder
There is a presumption in the tech transfer and commercialization world that the good stuff is the stuff that will have market traction and thus make you money. That is because the metrics we use to measure success are primarily financial. One example: Here is the first sentence from AUTM’s “Highlights of the FY2014 Licensing Survey Now Available” at https://www.autm.net/advocacy-topics/newsroom/highlights-of-fy2014-licensing-survey-now-availabl/. “Highlights of annual licensing activity survey show steady growth in the patenting and licensing of new technologies, net product sales, and new products and startups in fiscal year 2014.”
This is all “good” stuff, if we assume net product sales, new products, and start-ups are “good” things. Of course the point is what is good is slippery. Plato wrote a whole book (The Republic) about what is good and how we recognize it as good. Recall in the last blog post we discussed the two primary metrics for TTOs: make money for the university and create social benefit. Clearly this “good” stuff can be defined as good under the first metric, make money. The question I want to poise here is whether this is “good” under the second metric.
The argument here is:
- product sales create social benefits because …
- new products create social benefits because …
- start-ups create social benefits because …
Now let’s look at some advice from “Fallacies” offered by The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/fallacies/.
“Each argument you make is composed of premises (this is a term for statements that express your reasons or evidence) that are arranged in the right way to support your conclusion (the main claim or interpretation you are offering). You can make your arguments stronger by
- using good premises (ones you have good reason to believe are both true and relevant to the issue at hand),
- making sure your premises provide good support for your conclusion (and not some other conclusion, or no conclusion at all),
- checking that you have addressed the most important or relevant aspects of the issue (that is, that your premises and conclusion focus on what is really important to the issue), and
- not making claims that are so strong or sweeping that you can’t really support them.”
The logical fallacy here the … Why are these good? We do not know. We have not been told these are products heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, stop the wars, or protect the environment. The implicit argument is:
- Premise 1: Being useful is a good thing
- Premise 2: Technology is useful when applied.
- Therefore: Technology when applied is a good thing
Of course, we can all come up with counter examples. For example:
- Being useful is a good thing
- Mustard gas is useful in war
- Therefore mustard gas is a good thing
There are two particular fallacies here. The first is Hasty Generalization according to the Writing Center. The fallacy is a generalization to all technology based on results from a small sample of technology. We know not all applications of a technology necessarily create social benefits. The solution to the first fallacy is to Premise 1 to say sometimes being useful is a good thing.
The second fallacy is Missing the Point, which means the premises do not support the conclusion. Usefulness in the second premise refers to the fact the technology allows us to manipulate nature. To be good, the conclusion refers to the fact the application is socially beneficial and hence anything that facilitates creation of social benefits is useful for that purpose and thus is good. But not all applications are good so the fact the technology is useful is necessarily but not sufficient.
The implication for our discussion is we need a set of metrics by which we can judge applications as to whether they are socially beneficial or not. Technologies which facilitate social benefits should rank higher in priority for action by TTOs than those which do not. Then among these we can apply the second criteria of do they make money.
Just what the criteria for good should is of course an issue to be addressed. I suspect if we were serious about doing good things, such criteria could be developed either by the AUTM or on a university by university basis. Creating a list of criteria would not be hard if we are willing to paint broad brush. For example, AUTM could poll its members and ask them what are the five greatest challenges facing humanity. Disclosures, licenses, applications of technologies that can address those challenges should be tracked. An award could be given each year to the TTO that did best. That would be the first thing reported on it in the licensing survey summary.
Bottom line, it’s time to take social benefit seriously rather than just assuming it is captured by financial metrics. Or, as Plato put it. All professionals practice two arts. The first is the art of their profession which is where they do good. The second is the money making art, which is necessary to have the resources to practice the first art.