I went to an event at the London Technology Network the other day called "Emerging technologies for Interpreting & Using Digital Content". It was intended to be a technology transfer event - i.e. one intended to transfer ideas from universities to companies, although companies like Scientio were invited too.

I find the whole thing a little strange. In my career I've spent a lot of time transferring technology from my various ventures to universities. It has never, ever flowed in the opposite direction.

My first company, Neural Computer Sciences, for instance, sold mostly to universities.

In the UK there has been a general shift to push universities to generate revenue - something they often do not do very well, and something that sits badly with the idea of disinterested scholarship. 

I've ben involved with several universities in pure academic terms, and have sponsored PhD students, and my experience is that the considerations of publishing and getting on as an academic are at loggerheads with commercial software development.

 

I talked to an august professor from Cambridge at the event who said that he thought that text mining was finally ready to leave the universities and head out to companies.

 

I was amazed by this comment. It doesn't seem to me that text mining research has been something that the universities have done best or even the most of.

Text mining especially is an area where you need to prove ideas in a practical way with large volumes of text. Many ideas that look great in the lab fail on large trials.

 

It's always seemed to me that computer science departments in universities should be like English Lit departments. Their job is to record and comment on the works of authors and teach about them, not to generate creative works of their own.

 

The most frequent losers from this technology transfer approach, at least in this field, are the customers. I've talked to lots of them who have been badly let down by university departments. This is mostly because of a mismatch in aspirations - the academic sees keeping his PhD students occupied, revenue coming in and papers being published as his goals - the customer imagines a shiny new product that will make him a fortune. Generally in this relationship once the customer is hooked it's the academic who wins.

 

No - what customers for new technology need is a company like Scientio that bridges the academic and commercial worlds - but you knew I'd say that, didn't you?