normalizing research universities

The Chronicle: Daily news: 07/11/2005 -- 03:

Many research universities are responding to fiscal, political, and competitive pressures with a rankings-driven "arms race" that creates management problems and can erode institutions' core strengths, said a Harvard economist on Sunday at the annual meeting here of the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

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Recently there has been discussion of this topic here, where some people think that investing heavily in new directions for research might not be profitable if it undercuts currently successful and ongoing projects. I am not convinced one way or another. What i do know is that fighting for position in a field with 100 other major universities is probably not a strategy for success unless you have quite a bit of money. I think that this is a problem of economic strategy. Everyone wants to get into the position of University of California, Stanford or Harvard in terms of making money from IP, however, as several papers at the recent Triple Helix show. There is no way of 'striking it rich' with any certainty. You are just as likely to make IP money from innovations in your current field as from any investment in a different field. The reason that some universities do strike it rich more often is because they tend to innovate at the beginning of a field. That is the key, starting a field, no entering it later, and that is where most strategic positioning goes wrong. Or at least that is my opinion of the research that I've read and seen.