A professional basketball player who wakes up one morning at the end of his contract and decides to "take his talents to South Beach" is free to do so.
But if you're a researcher, unless you're a faculty member at the University of Miami, the chance that you can take your federally funded "talents" -- whether they take the shape of a new kind of drug, a mobile phone technology, or some other innovation -- to a commercialization office in South Beach is somewhat unlikely. The free agency of ideas is limited. …