The Idea Incubators.. Good Idea !!!

Reading NY Times article on The Idea Incubators or Proof-of-concept centers. It looks like a good idea as it is already effective in encouraging more and more researchers to get their product to the market. What I am not sure of is the long term consequences of the federal funding getting diverted towards commercialization oriented research. I hope that the funding for proof-of-concept centers is not coming at a cost of funding for fundamental scientific research.

Commercial product oriented research is already done in industry R & D. Besides many of the Universities have tech transfer dept to help researcher get their ideas to market. I am not sure if pumping more federal money in it will make a big difference. There is a chance that it might prove detrimental in the long run if it ends up discouraging researchers from working on challenging and more fundamental research problems.

May be I am looking at it from skewed view point (I blame it on my academic research background). It makes more sense when I think of federal funding for proof-of-concept centers as an effort from the government to help tech industry and thus economy at large and not University research.