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ARMONK, N.Y. and KANSAS CITY, MO., December 19, 2005 Leaders from four information technology companies, seven American universities and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation announced today that they have adopted first-of-a-kind guiding principles to accelerate collaborative research for open source software. These twelve enterprises believe the principles will accelerate innovation and contribute to open source software research across a breadth of initiatives, thus enabling the development of related industry standards and greater interoperability, while managing intellectual property in a more balanced manner.
In August, IBM and the Kauffman Foundation, a private foundation that focuses on advancing innovation and entrepreneurship, cosponsored a University and Industry Innovation Summit at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC. To accelerate collaborative innovation, current intellectual property barriers were evaluated and plans were drafted to support a variety of research relationships.
Recognizing the existence of a complex continuum of possible research partnerships, the Summit team agreed to address open collaboration models, in particular instances where researchers will create and disseminate software knowledge freely to the public. Pervasive acceptance of the open collaboration principles by other universities and the IT industry, as well as the development of guiding principles for other research agreements remains at the core of the Summit team’s continuing agenda. The goal is to shorten the time from the first spark, or idea, to the commencement of research on that idea.
The Grand Challenge (Rationale): Greater commercialization (bringing innovative collaboration to market quickly) throughout the IT industry can depend on improved university and industry intellectual property practices.
This is nothing short of a call to action. A call to action that universities, IBM, and other IT industry companies understands and will address. In true collaborative form, Universities and IT Industry Participants must come together to acknowledge existing barriers, build solutions that address these barriers, and work together to move more quickly from intention (the research idea) to collaboration (including both open and joint research collaborative models). Additionally, know that this work will be complementing several organizations, for example, many universities, IBM, HP, other IT industry companies, and the Kauffman Foundation, that have been working on these issues through GUIRR, BASIC, and through many other avenues.
Research partnerships between universities and industries in the US are too complex due to intellectual property ownership implications.
With universities and industry competing on a global scale, we must act now to enable a quicker approach to research collaborations, allowing for continued national innovation leadership.
By proactively agreeing on standard principles for all types of research relationships, we can shorten the time it takes to move from concept through research and development.
Key Messages: We're raising awareness that this is a complex challenge, with many possible solutions. It’s a classic business problem, with no silver bullets. We’re working to break down the complexity by building more point solutions across a continuum.
Understanding the university-industry research continuum is key. On the left is open collaboration, the middle is joint proprietary and the right is sponsored private. We believe solutions need to be identified to address each of these models to help shorten the time from research intent to development.
Also, different industry business models exist and, at times, universities and industry will need to employ different intellectual property practices and research models. A one size fits all approach has not been efficient.
Our Objectives: By bridging the gaps, we'll accelerate innovative collaboration between Universities and Industry.
Strategically, we will promote collaborative innovation between industry and universities throughout computer science, its applications, IT software, and the IT services disciplines and work to remove barriers to support collaborative research improvements. For example, we'll shorten the time from intent to joint development of IT knowledge and software, when the goal is to openly share / publish created knowledge.
Next Steps: Pervasive acceptance of the principles and continued effort for 2006.
Pervasive acceptance of the open collaboration principles, i.e., providing an option to all US universities and all IT companies (or other industries too). The Summit team will continue to address this problem by linking even more closely with other work efforts such as the National Academy, e.g., GUIRR (Government University Industry Research Roundtable) and to other organizations that have really been pushing forward in this area, like BASIC (Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium), COGR (Council on Government Relations), the Council on Competitiveness, CRA (Computer Research Assoc.), and so on. And we plan to keep the Summit team together, to work on the other types of research arrangements, along the university - industry research continuum. This is a macro problem and research principles represent micro solutions directed at each point along the continuum.
For more information, view the press release (PDF, 46,6KB) and Open Collaboration Principles document. (PDF, 71KB)
Contacts:
- Glenn Hintze, IBM 914-766-3425, ghintze@us.ibm.com
- Wendy Guillies, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation 816-932-1046, wguillies@kauffman.org
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