The idea that people respond to incentives is completely unsurprising, except, apparently, to people at the top of government/academia. If the university receiv

The idea that people respond to incentives is completely unsurprising, except, apparently, to people at the top of government/academia. If the university receives a substantial portion of the rights to my work, I'm going to do less work, particularly if the university isn't required to contribute to my work after I launch my firm. The natural experiment that arose here reminds me of VC firms- firms like YC (or Entrepreneur First in the UK) offer exceptionally good deals to the firms that they fund under the belief that doing so helps the firms succeed, and in so doing, helps the VC firms realise a greater return on their asset. Other VC firms, in comparison (particularly smaller/local firms) seem to impose more onerous terms on the firms that they fund, labouring under the belief that in so doing, the firms will make more money, when (IMO) the firms are reducing the incentive of the founding team to work as hard as they would have otherwise. I suspect, but do not have any references to show, that providing equity grants to employees, or providing more generous funding to a company, would produce a similar, albeit positive, change in innovation & productivity.