R&D consortia: Impact on competitiveness?

This research examines the impact of research and development (R&D) consortia on the competitiveness of American companies. It also concludes that since passage of the 1984 National Collaborative Research Act, which allows companies to jointly perform research, only a few R&D consortia have been formed and they do not have much impact on companies through applications of new technology. It is suggested that R&D consortia may have more impact on firms that are catching-up technologically or for which the particular research is tangential to their core business. He holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the George Washington University (1988), and has worked for the National Science Foundation, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and the National Academy of Sciences. His interests focus on technology, economic competitiveness, and government policy. He has recently published on these topics in Research Policy (August 1990), and Policy Studies Review (Spring 1991, forthcoming).     

Measuring the economic impact of research joint ventures supported by the EU Framework Programme

The objective of this paper is to analyse the effects of international R&D cooperation on firms?? economic performance. Our approach, based on a complete data set with information about Spanish participants in research joint ventures supported by the EU Framework Programme during the period 1995?C2005, establishes a recursive model structure to capture the relationship between R&D cooperation, knowledge generation and economic results, which are measured by labour productivity. In the analysis we take into account that the participation in this specific type of cooperative projects implies a selection process that includes both the self-selection by participants to join the consortia and the selection of projects by the European Commission to award the public aid. Empirical analysis has confirmed that: (1) R&D cooperation has a positive impact on the technological capacity of firms, captured through intangible fixed assets and (2) the technological capacity of firms is positively related to their productivity.     

Factors influencing technology transfer: The case of China

Transferring and utilizing technology in developing economies is a vital issue for economic growth. Often the separation between R&D institutes and industrial concerns limits the transfer of technology. The People's Republic of China, which has conducted R&D in institutes separate from the potential user firms, has recently moved to facilitate domestic technology transfer from R&D institutes to R&D consumers. This study, based on the statistical analysis of 60 R&D institutes in the machinery sector in China, found that, while R&D intensity improves transfer of technology, funding and employee mobility hinders transfer. His special area is in science and technology policy. He had worked for the State Science and Technology Commission of China for six years before he came to the US.     

The impact of participation in European joint research projects on knowledge creation and economic growth

This paper investigates the impact of participation in European scientific networks on the stock of knowledge and on economic growth. We use scientific links in FP programmes to weight foreign R&D in order to construct two different measures of foreign R&D spillovers and we assess their impact on the production of knowledge (patents) and on economic growth in a panel of countries participating in FP over the period 1994–2005. We find that participation in EU funded projects is an important channel of knowledge transfer. However, while for countries with high levels of R&D expenditure R&D spillovers contribute to the generation of new knowledge, for low R&D spenders knowledge spillovers facilitate technological imitation and catching up.     

Patent analysis for promoting technology transfer in multi-technology industries: the Korean aerospace industry case

With the increasing importance of technology, the efficiency of R&D investment is becoming a critical factor to an organisation’s success. As a result, many studies have carried out to create useful information to support various decision-makings faced during R&D planning but few efforts were made to discuss technology transferability in creating the information. Technology transferability can be an important factor to increase the efficiency of R&D investment especially in a multi-technology industry, where a compound of several industries produces a variety of components and systems. Therefore, this study purposes to develop a systematic method to analyse the transferability of technology, aiming to facilitate R&D spill-over. For the purpose of analysis, patent data from USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) was adopted and patent citation analysis applied, which shows the relationship between technologies and industries as quantitative measures. The research result then was applied to Korean aerospace industry and its utility verified. The suggested method is expected to be used in understanding technology characteristics and making the most use of R&D outputs by promoting technology transfer in multi-technology industries.     

Technology transfer perspectives in globalising India (drugs and pharmaceuticals and biotechnology)

The paper briefly outlines the status of technology transfer related issues in drugs & pharma and biotechnology sectors in India. The paper also outlines the contemporary business strategies including R&D and technology transfer models. The study indicates that present technology transfer policies and mechanisms are weak and need to be restructured. The current fiscal incentives and tax concessions etc. available for R&D in industry seem to have outlived and are no longer attractive because of continuous lowering of tariff rates and tax rates in the context of WTO and liberalization of policies. Moreover, the issue of R&D support to industry is not covered in the WTO as in case of subsidies. Therefore, it is advisable for the government to revisit the existing promotional measures for R&D. FDI policies also need to be tailored to encourage Technology transfers and capability building. Recommendations are made for making Technology Transfer more effective for the growth and competitiveness of the industry. A technology transfer management model is suggested.      

Maximizing R&D investments in the Department of Energy's Environmental cleanup program

The investment made in research and development (R&D) by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Environmental Management (EM) program must result in products that will significantly benefit the Department's cleanup efforts. A customer-oriented decision-making process for managing technology development is needed to appropriately link technology development activities with cleanup operations. This paper presents a process for R&D management, which we have named the Technology Investment Decision Model.The model identifies six R&D stages leading to technology implementation. The model incorporates decision points (or “gates”) within the R&D process where projects are selected for funding. The purpose of this “stage-gate” process is to ensure early evaluation of projects against technical and nontechnical criteria in order to ensure that end products will not only provide superior performance, but also meet the acceptance requirements of the intended customers. The model addresses the technology transfer and commercialization factors that must be considered to get technological innovations into the marketplace. The model is now being implemented within the EM technology development program and is providing a common framework to align the Department's environmental R&D activities with its cleanup goals.     

Facilitating public-to-private technology transfer through consortia: initial evidence from Korea

Korean public research institutes (PRIs) are experimenting with a consortia approach for promoting public-to-private technology transfer. This research examines the effectiveness of five regional technology transfer consortia operating in Korea from 2002 to 2006 and explores their characteristics including motivations, facilitators, barriers, and challenges. The paper reports both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Archival and survey data were collected on the effectiveness and characteristics of the technology transfer consortia. The proposition was supported that membership in these consortia can enhance the technology transfer performance of participating PRIs. Reasons on how consortia increase PRI performance are discussed and four key drivers are seen as being critical to increasing the effectiveness of consortia. Conclusions focus on lessons learned for policy makers, PRIs, and consortia.     

Trends in Academic Research Spending, Alliances, and Commercialization

Widespread changes underway in the national R&D landscape are impacting how universities fund, conduct, and disseminate their own research efforts. The key components of these trends are revealed through a variety of indicators, including on financial resources, publishing and patenting metrics, and research partnerships. Many of the changes appear to be cost-driven. Particularly as funding increases from Government have slowed and expectations for cost-sharing increased during the past decade, universities increasingly have come to rely on nonfederal sources, notably industry and institutional self-funding. The shift in funding sources has impacted all major fields of study. As part of this system-wide transformation, universities have noticeably increased their collaborations with nonacademic researchers as evidenced by trends in publication data and information on the formation of centers, consortia, and cooperative agreements. Concurrently, and not coincidentally, the transfer of universities' research output also is expanding. Such transfers are increasing both indirectly (as indicated from patenting citation data) and directly (as documented by universities' own patenting/licensing commercialization endeavors). On all accounts are we unlikely to have yet reached the peak of such activities.     

Relative importance of external R&D: Trends and motivations

This paper reports the findings of our survey study of the methods firms use to generate new basic and applied research and development (R&D). By far, the most important source of new R&D are the firms' in-house programs. This finding holds for firms of all sizes. External R&D arrangements are most common for basic research, although most firms indicated that in the future they expect to increase their reliance on external sources for applied R&D. Small firms tend to acquire technology from the provider, whereas larger firms seem to utilize licensing agreements for gaining access to the results of R&D. Large firms may also be using more of a portfolio approach to external R&D in that they often use several different sources. They also appear to form their outside R&D ventures not only for traditional cost/risk-sharing reasons but also for strategic and competitive reasons. Their attempts to diversify their sources of technology are just as important as the traditional cost- and risk-sharing motivation. Finally, although some collaborative R&D ventures are in response to foreign competition, this appears to be of more concern to mid-sized firms than small or large ones.     

Do R&D strategies in high-tech sectors differ from those in low-tech sectors? An alternative approach to testing the pooling assumption

Most studies investigating the determinants of R&D investment consider pooled estimates. However, if the parameters are heterogeneous, pooled coefficients may not provide reliable estimates of individual industry effects. Hence pooled parameters may conceal valuable information that may help target government tools more efficiently across heterogeneous industries. There is little evidence to date on the decomposition of the determinants of R&D investment by industry. Moreover, the existing work does not distinguish between those R&D determinants for which pooling may be valid and those for which it is not. In this paper, we test the pooling assumption for a panel of manufacturing industries and find that pooling is valid only for output fluctuations, adjustment costs and interest rates. Implementing the test results into our model, we find government funding is significant only for low-tech R&D. Foreign R&D and skilled labour matter only in high-tech sectors. These results suggest important implications for R&D policy.     

Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers

This paper takes a first look at the effect of Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRCs) on industrial R&D laboratories. IUCRCs are small academic centers designed to foster technology transfer between universities and firms. Since IUCRCs depend on industry support we expect them to further the research of member companies. Our findings suggest that IUCRCs promote industry-university technology transfer. We find strong associations between laboratory membership in IUCRCs and the importance of faculty consultants, co-authorship with faculty and hiring of graduate students to the laboratories. IUCRC membership contributes small increments, not always statistically significant, of 2% in laboratory patenting and research expenditures. Both estimates are larger for National Science Foundation IUCRCs, consistent with their quality and their sorting to larger laboratories. These results survive a simultaneous equation analysis of the joint decision to patent and join IUCRCs. Nevertheless more work is needed to separate the effect of the IUCRCs from the matching mechanism that assigns IUCRCs to R&D laboratories.     

The structure and dynamics of the global network of inter-firm R&D partnerships 1989–2002

Research and development (R&D) partnerships are formed to share the risks and benefits of R&D. At the macro level, they result in a globe-spanning network that can be a valuable source of international knowledge spillovers. This network is the subject of a considerable body of literature. Often-made claims are that R&D collaboration is an important activity in a competitive environment, but that the importance of international partnerships has declined over time. Furthermore, it is claimed that collaborations are disproportionally concentrated within the developed economies. However, this literature fails to account for variations in the sizes of underlying firm populations between countries and over time. We argue that these population sizes create an opportunity structure of available collaboration partners for firms, and that ignoring variations in this structure potentially leads to erroneous conclusions about the structure and dynamics of the R&D network. To address this problem, we study the structure and dynamics of the global R&D network on an international and cross-industry scale using longitudinal data for 1989?C2002. We integrate data on public firms and their R&D partnerships and confront earlier findings with our data and a set of methods, which enables us to correct for the structure and dynamics in the firm population. While our study confirms previous findings concerning the worldwide trend in collaborative activity, it also shows that results on individual countries need correction. In particular, the importance of R&D collaboration for US companies is overestimated, while their openness towards foreign partners is underestimated.     

Nanotechnology and the US national innovation system: continuity and change

A substantial literature on nanotechnology innovation and commercial development has characterized several elements of these phenomena as constituting new developments in the US national innovation system. Among these elements are the (asserted) “post-academic” nature of US universities’ involvement with nanotechnology R&D, and federal funding of nanotechnology R&D on goals related to economic competitiveness. This paper challenges the “novelty” of these elements, while suggesting that other elements of nanotechnology R&D, including the extensive patenting of the results of nanotechnology-related research and the emphasis within many university-industry collaborations on patent-based channels for “technology transfer,” may indeed be new and raise questions for the long-term efficiency and innovative performance of nanotechnology-related R&D.     

The Brazilian FCC Catalyst Plant: An Example of a Successful Joint Venture between Petrobrás and Akzo Bringing about Technological Innovation

The creation of the Fabrica Carioca de Catalisadores (FCCSA) is presented in this article. After some brief background information on the reasons for its implementation, the methods used to choose the partner are discussed, as well as the technology transfer, with particular emphasis on R&D transfer. Finally, the plant's current stage of development is studied and its main characteristics are presented, as an example of a successful joint venture between culturally different and geographically distant countries.     

Collaborative R&;D: intellectual property rights between Tsinghua University and multinational companies

Tsinghua University, one of the top universities in China, has conducted a lot of collaborative R&D projects with multinational companies in the recent years. One of tough issues in the collaborative R&D is to deal with the intellectual property rights. The Chinese Patent Law and other relevant laws make Tsinghua University to look for more intellectual property rights. Several factors such as the input from the collaborative parties, the property of R&D, the relation between the collaborative project and the activities of R&D made before, or to be made after, the collaboration, and the life and potential market of the technologies play an important rule in the treatment of Intellectual property rights. The different collaborative models have different models of the distribution of intellectual property rights between the University and multinational companies.      

“Spin-In” Technology Transfer for Small R&D Bio-Technology Firms: The Case of Bio-Defense

This study investigates the types of factors which can lead to government acquisition, or the “spin-in” of bio-defense technologies from small bio-technology firms. Empirical findings suggest that for small biotechnology R&D firms desiring to increase “spin-in” technology transfer, there appears to be two distinct and important influence groups—the scientific community within federal agencies, institutes, and centers, and the more managerial, policy-oriented decisions makers. We found that personal communication and networking appear to be the primary factor that leads to a successful technology transfer, however, the form and substance of personal communication and networking will differ between the two influence groups.     

Assessing the relationship between R&D subsidy,R&D cooperation and absorptive capacity: an investigation on the manufacturing Spanish case

Private companies want to eliminate outgoing spillovers while policymakers seek to maximize them. With subsidized R&D cooperation agreements both agents partially achieve their objectives. For this reason, in Europe, policymakers grant subsidies for R&D activities with the condition of establishing R&D cooperation agreements. This study explores the relationship of complementarity between R&D subsidy, R&D cooperation and absorptive capacity in the context of its contribution to labor productivity of enterprises. The data used comes from the Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC), managed by the Spanish National Statistics Institute. We selected manufacturing companies in the period 2008–2013. We evaluate the existence of complementarity through the systems approach and the interaction approach. The econometric technique that we used to estimate the coefficients of our empirical model was maximum-likelihood random effects. As a consequence of the low absorptive capacity of Spanish manufacturing firms we find that R&D subsidies and R&D cooperation agreements are not complementary variables, i.e., receiving public subsidies as a result of establishing R&D cooperation agreements has a lower impact on productivity than the sum of the individual impacts of R&D cooperation and R&D subsidies. In consequence, this result calls into question the convenience of using subsidized R&D cooperation agreements as a tool for promoting innovation in EU countries as there are notable differences between the companies in these countries in terms of absorption capacity.     

R&D Venture: proposition of a technology transfer concept for breakthrough technologies with R&D cooperation: A case study in the energy sector

At times when the market demands strong active innovation, large industrial corporations with established R&D organizations benefit from screening and developing breakthrough innovation. The ability of established organizations to absorb for future technologies is a key to successfully recognize, explore and capture breakthrough innovations. R&D Venturing is a practical way of bringing about technology transfer and exploration of future technologies through R&D cooperation, which is described in this paper by a multiple case study in the energy sector. Existing literature has been reviewed and an R&D Venturing concept will be suggested with a number of propositions for implementation. The results of the case study strongly support that different perspectives of the concept from industry, academia and the ventures themselves have to be carefully understood. Based on the results of the case study, a conceptual framework and propositions for a successful implementation have been derived. A critical discussion of the R&D Venturing concept shows the need for further empirical investigation.