Alan Cooperman | Sep 17, 1989 | 8 min read
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—Every summer, Eric Johnson plays Santa Claus to deserving faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And the list that he checks before he hands out his gifts is laid out in a 3-inch-thick computer printout—an account of “points” accumulated by individual faculty members over the past year as the reward for having met with representatives of private industry to discuss their work and share their technical expertise. Those points are converted