Resource:How to lead national policy change (IP Student Rights)

Why leading a national policy change is important

 Leading a national policy movement becomes necessary when university educational structures stifle innovation and entrepreneurship on their respective campuses. In the context of student intellectual property rights, leading a movement for change becomes even more important since the current system in place only lets students/researchers keep 25% of what they make.  If students and researchers are under the impression they are not going to have ownership of what they create, they become dissuaded from exploring new ventures, entrepreneur opportunities, and creative endeavours. What this translates into is a flight of these very universities most valuable asset: human capital.

Current student IP rights  

The situation for entrepreneurs, students, and researchers at Universities is bleak. The key players within the entrepreneurial community are holding off on creating new game changing innovations, all because they are concerned about ownership. The current system used by almost all universities across the country allocates IP in the following manner:

   25% Office of technology transfer

   25% Chancellor

   25% Provost  

   25% Actual owner (student, researcher)

It is almost insane to think that you can only keep 25% of the intellectual property and 25% of the profits from invention you created, while attending school. In reality, this system should be completely switched, and the owner of the idea should get at least 75%, allocating the rest to the Office of Technology Transfer.

Why this should be changed

Intellectual property has never been an important policy for the federal government. That is why that there does not exist any federal policies for students right to intellectual property. The federal government has never seen undergraduate research as full researchers. The team pushing this movement see that there is an opportunity to institute policy for change. The movement so far has attracted support from the White House and US officials. The current percentages of ownership give students reason to not want to do research. By creating a federal policy, each institution would not have to construct their own policy. This type of system will produce a more uniform structure for students IP rights for all institutions and also will be fair to the innovative student.

Team currently working on this

Caleb Carr is a top researcher at University of Colorado and is leading the movement for student IP rights. Under Caleb, there are students all across the country working to make this change possible. The students associated with this movement are apart of the University Innovators Fellowship program. Even though this is a UIF project, it does not share the same affiliates such as NCIIA. This would be a conflict of interest due to that these organizations are federally funded programs.Caleb Carr and possible team members plan to present this student IP change to Legislature in November.

For more information about this national policy change effort, go to studentsforiprights.com

If you would like to get involved in this movement, email Caleb Carr at CALEB.CARR@ucdenver.edu.

Prepare

Preparation is just as important as execution when leading a national policy change movement. At the macro level, you must analyze where you want your movement to end up, and work backwards from there. Create a list of everything that needs to happen between right now, and the day your movement succeeded. For a policy movement this means:

1) Go to Capitol Hill, and talk to everyone. See where politicians, companies, lobbyist, and citizens stand on the issue. This will be an important tool to map out how you must move forward.

2) Create a strategy. What is going to make this movement successful, and stand out from the rest? It is important to ask yourself this and identify the key characteristic or plan which will make your movement succeed and reach the goals you set for it. Insights from the previous step will help you create a policy that many can get behind.

3)Figure out what the decision makers will support. From the previous two steps, you should have a pretty good idea of what people will want, and not just what you want. Build the core principles and purpose of your movement around what everyone wants to see happen.

4)Recruit. Get as much man power as possible. You are going to need a ton of volunteers to help you build, market, and operate a complex movement.

Start The Movement

The next step is to start the movement. Follow this framework to get the ball rolling on your national policy initiative, and make sure to follow each step in order!

1) Get support. Pitch your initiative to those with influence. This means talking to politicians, lobbyists, school administrators, and those who can possibly fund your campaign later down the line.   

2) Define key tasks. What needs to be done? Create a laundry list of key tasks, meetings, and calls you need to make.

3) Recruit project leaders. These people will be your inner circle for the movement, and need to be reliable good leaders.

4)Recruit volunteers. You will need a serious amount of volunteers to help with the daily operations of your movement. Anywhere from 5 to 15 volunteers should be supporting each project lead.

5)Delegate tasks to project leaders, and then volunteers. Compile everything that needs to be done into a few major categories, and delegate these to the team leads. Team leads will then work to delegate tasks to volunteers underneath them, and make sure their aspect of project is moving forward.

6) Communicate with project leaders. Keep an open line of communication with your inner circle, and monitor each teams progress. It is important to manage every aspect of the movement at first, and have tight quality control.

Manage the team

There are many different management styles out there, but the important thing is to be always thinking about the movement. You have to rely on every member of your organization to succeed, and it is always necessary to contingency plan.  If a volunteer is sick, or cannot complete their work,it falls back on you to delegate that back out. It really comes down to communication, if there is an issue your team needs to be comfortable enough with you to call, text, or email you right away. Always check up on everyones progress, and don’t be afraid to have a backup for every task. If you have one person that is supposed to hand out fliers, tell another person they may be needed as well. This mitigates the risk of a team member flaking, and also engages more volunteers.

Budget

Budgeting is a key issue that must be completely thought out prior to launching your campaign. Even if your movement never intends to turn a profit, you will undoubtedly encounter costs in your daily operations. Key financials concerns will mostly comprise advertising and promotion. Your logo, social media campaigns, website, and other marketing collateral will all cost money, and no matter how much people support your movement, your not getting all of that for free.

In addition, a key cost is sending team members to Washington DC to lobby. Team members need to be on site talking with changemakers and decision makers, and if you are not located closely to capitol hill, travel costs can build up quickly. Typical movements send about 10 volunteers to Washington DC for about 1 week.

Funding can come through many different avenues, whether it be via grants, other policy movements, or donation. The important thing to keep in mind is the obligations of your grants, as they may restrict funding and support from specific types of organizations.  

Obstacles you encounter  

As with creating any organization, there will be obstacles on the road to success. The biggest hold up on moving forward will always be lobbying. The outcome of the entire effort of the movement must be a clear policy change, and the only way to do this is to pressure politicians. You basically must be pushing congressional leaders constantly, and sometimes you don't get the best responses.

Fundraising may also be an obstacle you encounter, but if you study the operations of similar movements you may figure out how they obtained robust funding. You must be persistent and resilient throughout the ups and downs of the perpetual funding process.

Just remember that at the end of the day, it’s all politics.

Page created by Jordan Greenwald, and Conner Hazelrigg