Through QB3, Kelly has been leading a cultural change at UC, and at the same time, trying to institutionalize that change. Perhaps the most far-reaching project that will emerge from QB3 is one that within the institution is being dubbed the “95 Theses,” a nod to Martin Luther’s treatise that sparked the Protestant Reformation. This effort, led by QB3’s Crawford and Lee Benton, senior counsel at Cooley GodwardKornish, involves interviews with industry and academic participants to identify obstacles to successful collaboration. The goal is to draft a comprehensive proposal to overhaul outdated regulations and practices that have given UC a reputation as being unduly bureaucratic and difficult to work with.

Rather than address individual problems one at a time, the plan is to identify a core set of issues and resolve them at once. This ranges from outdated rules written for an era when concerns about university-industry alliances focused on mining and not biotechnology, to an institutional reward system that discourages entrepreneurial risk-taking.

“If anything goes wrong at UC, it ends up in the headlines of the San Francisco Chronicle,” says Cooley’s Benton. “Over time, UC’s become very risk averse. Reg doesn’t think that way at all. Reg has goals in terms of industry cooperation. He is very sensible to think through what’s needed to get something done that’s a win-win situation for both, and do it on that basis.”

“What we are doing here is a way of making sure California keeps funding its university, and, at the larger level, that the federal government keeps funding research,” he says. “Unless we make it really clear that we are committed to trying to extract a societal benefit from all these tax dollars, they will disappear.”