R&D consortia and technology transfer: Initial lessons from MCC

This paper discusses important aspects of technology transfer between MCC (the first R&D consortium to register under the National Cooperative Research Act of 1984) and company-based personnel. An evaluation of established technology-transfer models leads to a discussion of a parallel-processing approach and three important dimensions of the transfer process: mode, initiative, and continuity. Differences between R&D consortia and their member companies are categorized in terms of values and imperatives, networking, time pressure, the universalistic/particularistic nature of research activities, and different evaluation criteria. Generalized managerial implications are presented for R&D consortia.     

The relation between technology import and domestic R&D

The relation between domestic R&D and imports of technology is examined for 10 countries. Simple regressions revealed strong complementarity for each of the countries. Multiple regressions including GNP per capita and number of scientists and engineers were performed for the five countries with time series for all the variables. Strong complementarity was found between technology imports and domestic R&D and other variables for Japan and South Korea, weak for France, none for Germany and the US. Excluding government-financed R&D in the US resulted in a substitutive relation. Japan revealed a sharp decline in the ratio of technology payments to R&D spending; Korea is following in its steps. Complementarity appears to weaken in later stages as technology development strategies shift from dependent to imitative to autonomous or offensive technology development.     

Modeling the international technology transfer process in construction projects: evidence from Thailand

Many developing and newly industrialized countries lack the technical and management capabilities to undertake large and/or complex infrastructure projects. In an effort to more rapidly develop their infrastructure, economies and living standards, many have embarked on a series of international Technology Transfer (TT) initiatives within the construction and other industries. However, these initiatives have not immediately translated into enhanced capabilities and competitiveness within host country firms, resulting in a sustained reliance on foreign firms. In an attempt to improve rates of TT in developing countries, this article proposes a conceptual model for international TT that accommodates the numerous factors believed to impact on the processes effectiveness and derived outcomes. Utilizing the results from a questionnaire survey of 162 industry professionals from Thailand, an international TT model including the significant factors which impact on the TT process and the degree of value added from it, was formulated through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Moreover, the significance of direct and indirect interrelationships between model factors was determined through structural equation modeling. This model included four process enablers, namely, government influence, transferee characteristics, transferor characteristics and relationship building, and one outcome factor named TT value added. Building relationships (i.e. trust, understanding and communication) between the transferor and transferee was determined to be the key predictor of TT-induced value creation for the host construction sector.      

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.     

The R&D performance of the South African manufacturing sector, 1970–1993

In this article we undertake a detailed exploration of the research and development activities in one particular middle-income country. We explore what the data from R&D surveys can tell us about the levels, the determinants and the effectiveness of R&D in the manufacturing sector. We point to some of the broader factors that may have influenced South Africa’s drive to improve the technological capacity of its manufacturing sector, but we mostly focus on those issues associated directly with R&D. We show that the degree of interaction between the different domains of R&D activity, business, government and the tertiary sector has been weak, and that the possibility of positive spill-overs between these domains has not been fully exploited. In addition, little or no policy intervention designed to stimulate R&D activity by industry has been deployed in South Africa. We find that South African R&D activity has mainly been reactive in character and suggest that this lies at the heart of South Africa’s mixed R&D performance in relation to other developing countries.     

The role of R&D and input trade in productivity growth: innovation and technology spillovers

Productivity improvements generally are driven by technology innovation and its spillovers. This study explores the role of R&D investment and intermediate input trade in productivity growth using country-industry-level data for 25 advanced and emerging economies. This paper confirms that R&D investment and intermediate input import/export (both intra- and inter-industry) with technologically advanced economies play important roles in productivity growth in non-frontier countries. We further find that the productivity gains of technology spillovers via input trade channels are likely larger for countries/industries where technology converges to the frontier. These findings imply that the recent slowdown in R&D investment and intermediate input trade in some advanced economies may contribute to declining productivity growth. The potential productivity improvements from R&D investment and free trade as well as the importance of domestic capacity in facilitating technology spillovers should be recognized.

     

University R&D and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Italy

Ed Mansfield wrote several papers on the private returns to basic research (e.g. Mansfield, 1980) and the influence of academic research on industrial innovation (e.g. Mansfield, 1991). We extend this line of research by assessing the impact of university research on total factor productivity growth of Italian manufacturing firms. The econometric analysis is based on reduced-form estimation of the R&D capital stock model, including controls for two potential sources of sample selection bias, as proposed by Crepon et?al (1998) and Piga and Vivarelli (2004). Our results suggest that while there are positive returns to collaborative research with other firms, collaborative research with universities does not appear to directly stimulate productivity. We interpret this result as consistent with recent evidence (e.g. Hall et?al 2001, 2003) suggesting that firms engage in collaborative research with universities when appropriability conditions are weak.     

The role of incentives in the deployment of technologies from cooperative R&D

Over 1,400 cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) were in place across the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) laboratory system in May 1995—indicating that a broad sampling of industry endorses the objectives of the National Competitiveness Technology Transfer Act of 1989. The law enables DOE's contractor-operated facilities, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to collaborate with companies, industrial consortia, universities, and even state and local governments. Positive impacts cited by industrial CRADA participants thus far include the improvement of existing products and manufacturing processes, the reduction of investment risks associated with cutting-edge research, and an increased awareness of important technical trends. However, such industrial benefits are often hard to measure; that represents a potential problem for federally funded R&D institutions, where metrics associated with tangible economic impacts are assuming greater prominence. Future political support for public/private partnerships may depend on steep growth in quantitative measures of economic value, based on the sale of patented products and services. Boosting such sales in a significant way, could, in turn, depend on the consistent application of incentive-based approaches that motivate individuals and organizations to aggressively pursue technology-based commercialization goals. In Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where Lockheed Martin Energy Systems manages ORNL and other DOE research and production facilities, broadly defined incentives have played a key role in facilitating the sale of licensed products and services. Cumulative sales totaled $102,000,000 in April 1995, with several innovations just beginning to enter the marketplace after years of engineering and product development. The same factors that impact technology deployment in these “stand-alone” licenses will play a key role in the deployment of inventions arising from CRADAs.     

The impact of licensed-knowledge attributes on the innovation performance of licensee firms: evidence from the Chinese electronic industry

In this article, we provide a compelling case for demonstrating “learning-by-licensing,” and we further investigate the moderating effect of specific licensed-knowledge attributes on the innovation performance of licensee firms. This case is based on a unique dataset from the China State of Intellectual Property Office regarding technology-licensing activities and spanning the years 2000–2010. Using this dataset we make a longitudinal analysis of the lagging learning effect that transferee firms experience when they in-license technology. The empirical results from 71 Chinese electronic-industry firms reconfirm the concept of “learning-by-licensing.” Moreover, the results also indicate that both technology complexity and technology generality, which are attributes of licensed knowledge, have positive moderating effects on the relationship between technology in-licensing and the subsequent innovation performance of licensee firms. However, such a positive moderating effect was not found for the newness of technology.     

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.     

Complementarity effect in the innovation strategy: internal R&D and acquisition of capital with embodied technology

The Journal of Technology Transfer - For scale-intensive industries and science-based industries in Germany, we investigate the question whether firms combining internal R&D and acquisition...     

Industrial R&D Laboratories: Windows on Black Boxes?

This paper provides an overview of the survey-based literature on industrial Research and Development (R&D) laboratories, beginning with the work of Edwin Mansfield. Topics covered include R&D projects, new products, and new processes; the appropriability of intellectual property; the limits of the firm in R&D; and spillovers of knowledge from other firms and universities into the laboratories. I discuss the value of collecting information from industrial R&D managers, who participate in a wide range of R&D decisions and are the natural best source of information on these decisions. I also emphasize gaps in our knowledge concerning R&D from past studies, such as the private and social returns to R&D, the nature of firms' R&D portfolios, and other topics. The paper closes with a discussion of the benefits from building a national database on R&D laboratories that could be shared among researchers and that could take this area of research to a new and higher level of achievement.     

The Global Governance of Communicable Diseases: The Case for Vaccine R&D

Fighting communicable diseases such HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB, and malaria has become a global endeavor, with international health authorities urging the development of effective vaccines for the eradication of these global pandemics. Yet, despite the acknowledged urgency, and given the feasibility of effective vaccine development, public and private research efforts have failed to address a response adequate to the magnitude of the crisis. Members of the academic community suggest bridging this gap by devising research pull mechanisms capable of stimulating private investments, confident that competition-based market devices are more effective than public intervention in shaping scientific breakthroughs. With reference to the economics of innovation, the paper argues that, whilst such an approach would lead to a socially suboptimal production of knowledge, direct public intervention in vaccine R&D activities would represent a far more socially desirable policy option. In recognition of the current financial and political fatigue affecting the international community towards communicable disease control, the paper resorts to the theories of global public goods (GPGs) to provide governments, both in the North and in the South, with a powerful rationale for committing to a cooperative approach for vaccine R&D. The paper encourages the creation of a Global Health Research Fund to manage such exercise and proposes enshrining countries' commitments into an International Health Treaty. The paper ends by providing a number of policy recommendations.     

The influence of shared R&D-project innovativeness perceptions on university-industry collaboration performance

The Journal of Technology Transfer - University-industry collaboration (UIC) partners’ different organizational backgrounds entail socialization with distinct thought worlds, management...     

Team boundary-spanning activities and performance of technology transfer organizations: evidence from China

The Journal of Technology Transfer - This study performs an in-depth analysis of the causes and consequences of team boundary-spanning activities in the context of Chinese technology transfer, by...     

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.     

The communicative impact of terrorist attacks on the financial marketplace: a perspective from the efficient market hypothesis

This study measures patterns following a terrorist attack, from the perspective of market efficiency, to determine the communicative impact of terrorist attacks on the financial marketplace. The Efficient Market Hypothesis postulates that asset prices fully reflect all available information. An important implication is that, because market price changes are determined by new information (or variations in discount rates), it would be highly difficult to “beat the market” with expert stock selection or market timing. Overall, we found that, based on mixed results, terrorist attacks do not lead to a distinguishable pattern in the financial marketplace. Nevertheless, drawing on the Yale Model of Persuasion, these results suggest that terrorists are effective in their communicative goals, and they do lead to a compelling pattern in the proportion of negative returns on the day of the attack. More precisely, terrorists are able to communicate their message on a global scale, thereby resulting in investors adjusting their estimates of value downward. While a possible price correction pattern was found, the lack of statistical analysis performed on the variables, to a certain degree of significance, is a limitation of this study that ultimately renders the results of the study inconclusive.