Last week, Senator Moran (R-KS) joined by Senators Warner (D-VA), Coons (D-DE), Blount (R-MO) and Rubio (R-FL) introduced S. 3217, Startup Act 2.0, which seeks to build on the J.O.B.S. Act which President Obama signed into law last month. The bill addresses several challenges faced by small technology companies, including the availability of skilled labor and capital, and the burden of regulations.
We will comment on these provisions in a future post. In this post, I will focus on section 8 of the bill, “Accelerating the Commercialization of Taxpayer-funded Research.” Congress is correct to be concerned about how much of federally funded research is ultimately commercialized. Sadly, this aspect of the bill is ill conceived in its approach.
Overlooking the fundamental point that universities do not commercialize research, the bill directs the Secretary of Commerce to establish grants program to fund universities to “improve commercialization and transfer of technology.” [Section 8 (b) (2) (a)] Maybe the legislative intent is to support shared infrastructure for testing, demonstration, qualifying and validating new technologies. That would make some sense, although I’m not sure a university could provide such services at the scale necessary for the private sector to take the technology to commercial production. Besides, if that’s the intent of the bill, it’s not at all obvious.
S.3217 is a great indication that whatever divides our members ofCongress, the importance of technology to the economy, and by extension, the importance of technology development is not one of them. That there is bipartisan agreement on this point is very promising, but before we can translate that promise into good news for the economy (read: jobs), we have to have a better understanding of what commercialization really entails.
— Anita Balachandra