
University Innovation and the Professor's Privilege - cjbenedikt
http://www.nber.org/digest/may16/w22057.html
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The idea that people respond to incentives is completely unsurprising, except,
apparently, to people at the top of government/academia. If the university
receives a substantial portion of the rights to my work, I'm going to do less
work, particularly if the university isn't required to contribute to my work
after I launch my firm.

The natural experiment that arose here reminds me of VC firms- firms like YC
(or Entrepreneur First in the UK) offer exceptionally good deals to the firms
that they fund under the belief that doing so helps the firms succeed, and in
so doing, helps the VC firms realise a greater return on their asset. Other VC
firms, in comparison (particularly smaller/local firms) seem to impose more
onerous terms on the firms that they fund, labouring under the belief that in
so doing, the firms will make more money, when (IMO) the firms are reducing
the incentive of the founding team to work as hard as they would have
otherwise.

I suspect, but do not have any references to show, that providing equity
grants to employees, or providing more generous funding to a company, would
produce a similar, albeit positive, change in innovation & productivity.

