Ten Commandments for
Poor Technology Transfer
Mark D. Hill
Computer Sciences Department
University of Wisconsin-Madison
February 2004
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/tech-transfer.html
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/tech-transfer.ppt
I. Always work 30 years in the future.
- That way no one can prove you wrong before retirement.
II. Always start with a clean slate.
- Why be encumbered by past successes?
III. Remember that publishing papers is the end of research and technology transfer.
- If people don't have time to read your papers, their loss.
IV. Always remember that you are smarter than people in industry.
- You balance research with teaching a few classes, while they
only make systems with multi-million-transistor chips.
V. Never give talks in industry.
- They might make you wear a badge.
VI. Never hold industrial affiliates meetings or get feedback from industry on your research agenda.
- Industrial people know little about real computer architecture.
VII. Never allow your students to do internships in industry (or,
even worse, take a sabbatical there).
- Industrial people might get to know your students and corrupt them
(or corrupt you!).
VIII. Never consult for industry.
- One might spend time on problems people care about.
IX. Protect your intellectual property by not telling industry
(or anyone else) what you are doing until patents are filed.
- Lawyers are more fun than your computer architecture colleagues.
X. When meeting industrial people, just ask for money and don't waste time
building long-term relationships.
- Relationships are for people in the humanities.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to
David Patterson and David Wood
for useful comments.
I originally presented this material in Madrid, Spain, at a
High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) 2004
panel Bridging the Research Gap between Academia and Industry,
organized by Mazin S. Yousif. Online press coverage
(misleading and then corrected):
This document's style and some substance follows from:
- David Patterson,
How to Give a Bad Talk, circa 1983. Included in
Mark Hill,
Oral Presentation Advice, 1992, revised 1997.
- Mark Hill and David Wood,
Conference Etiquette, 1997.
- David Patterson,
How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia, 1998.