Andreas Broeckmann said:
> eric,
>
> i think your hypothesis is probably exaggerated; it's probably not even
> a 'disagreement' about money: from the press release i gather that they
> made a business plan with inflated expectations about the business
> opportunities and corporate funding that was to be expected. my guess
> is: the end of the bubble and general economic downturn
> (they opened in 2000, so the planning since the mid 90s must have
> been overtaken by reality...), together with the slow development of
> the EU, plus probably false expectations about the way in which
> european companies would be willing to co-fund an american corporate
> research player. - though i am sure there are certainly many other
> layers to this.
>

From personal experience, that's about right. I inherited a 3yr
sponsorship deal with MLE when I joined the dept I work in at the BBC. I
didn't renew it after the initial 3 years, event though I am was a great
supporter for the work they were doing there. The MediaLab model created
too much of an infrastructure commitment, in terms of staff and buildings,
for them to be really flexible and responsive to sponsor's needs. Their
research programmes were driven by the agendas of the programme leaders,
and they struggled to turn that agenda towards the kind of
product innovation that sponsors were looking for. We worked really hard
on a couple of projects with them, but ultimately the project leader was
looking for more investment for their pure research agenda, and we wanted
a product that we could actually trial. We just never managed to square
the two needs.

Media X at Stanford are adopting what might be a better model. They work
as a kind of virtual VC fund for research going on around the university.
If the research is media related, then Stanford researchers can apply for
Media X funding to boost the research. The money is given on a project
basis, often for only a year, and therefore there is no commitment to
supporting the researchers or their infrastructure beyond the remit of the
specific project. This gives corporate sponsors and researchers more
flexibility to agree goals, as there isn't a background agenda about
attracting funding for core infrastructure. It'll be interesting to see
how Stanford do with this model, which has only been running a few years.
they already seem to be having some success with partners in the car
industry.

Unfortunately, it seems MLE were trying to transplant a model that worked
well in the cash-rich, entrepreunerial world of America in the '90's, but
completely failed to take root in 21st centruy europe.


matt