Cornell Chronicle: Entrepreneurial engineers.

In my corporate life I had the opportunity to interact with a large number of Universities and experience their efforts to create an “entrepreneurial environment” on campus. Rather than focus on the negatives, and there are many, I thought I’d share my experience with a program that in my opinion really works well. In the interest of full disclosure, I had a role in 2008 in helping to set up the Kessler Fellows program in the Engineering College at Cornell. Many of the details of this program can be found at the link in this article. The program focus is well-placed; select students experience the “entrepreneurial environment” by working in the startup environment. This is critical, as little else in the typical undergraduate engineering education prepares a student for this type of work. The program has a semester long series of introductory presentations and discussion. These are designed to prepare the students to be full contributors in the summer startup internship wherever they are placed and whatever they are asked to do.

New Patent Law Means Trouble For Tech Entrepreneurs – Forbes.

I came across this article and decided to throw out a few comments of my own. The recent change in the US Patent law will have a number of consequences, but the impacts are a mixed bag in my opinion. One issue with this article is that it overstates the degree of “openness” of the current US innovation ecosystem. We may be “open” when compared to other countries, but my experience is that inventors, particularly in small companies, are quite careful in their discussions with potential investors, partners, etc. often requiring that a Non-disclosure statement be signed.

I do believe that patents are a critical piece of the innovation process, but they are not the only part and many would debate the relative importance of the components. The reality is that a  large number of patents are invalidated post issuance. I think attention on the innovation system needs to be placed upon the funding model, as this appears to be broken.