colleges invention tenure

Erich E. Kunhardt: "Necessity as the Mother of Tenure"
NYTimes, 14-Dec-2004

There's an interesting op-ed in the Times today calling for colleges to encourage inventing by making it a requirement for tenure.
He sees the US declining number of patents and wants to get away from the "research only" mindset of the past 100 years (starting with Johns Hopkins 'research as a requirement for tenure' 1876)
He doesn't mean inventing things with great commercial value, just the idea of inventiveness itself.