Patterns of industry interaction with federal laboratories

This article describes the results of a study of interactions between corporate members of the Industrial Research Institute and federal laboratories. The data were derived from a survey conducted in 1992, building on a similar survey conducted in 1988. The survey addressed questions about the barriers to more frequent and effective interaction, the types of interactions that pay off most for the firm, and the form that payoffs take. Since 1988, federal labs have become a more visible source of external technology and information for large, research-intensive companies, but they still lag considerably behind universities and other companies. The greatest increases in interaction with federal labs have occurred in technology licensing, contract research, and cooperative research, with cooperative research regarded as having the greatest future promise for companies. Perhaps the most significant result of the survey was that companies tend to interact with federal laboratories for reasons that have far more to do with long-term, less tangible payoffs than with expectations of business opportunities or technology commercialization. Both federal policy makers and lab managers should consider incentives to promote types of interactions that have high payoff, especially cooperative research, and initiate the kinds of informal contacts that must occur before downstream commitments are made: professional interactions at the person-to-person level, workshops, and seminars. Additionally, companies and federal labs should clearly acknowledge the high value offered by some of the less tangible payoffs from interaction, and work to develop evidence of these kinds of payoffs that will have as much credibility as the more tangible forms, such as expected profits from new business opportunities.     

Industry interactions with federal laboratories

This article is based on two surveys of US firms, all of them members of the Industrial Research Institute, on their interactions with university and federal laboratories. It covers mainly the federal part of the responses. Although questions remain to be answered (a followup survey is planned for mid-1991), the firms had a surprisingly high level of awareness of and interaction with the federal laboratories. Many of them plan to increase their external R&D funding. We believe the firms including such external resources in their strategic planning will achieve stronger competitive positions than those that do not. Director of the Graduate Program in Technology and Science Policy. Previously, he was principal scientist and group manager for Industrial Policy and Planning at the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado. He also served as policy analyst with the National Science Foundation's R&D Assessment Program and, subsequently, as acting leader of the Working Group on Innovation Processes and their Management. Roessner received degrees in electrical engineering from Brown University and Stanford University, and a master's degree and Ph.D. in Science, Technology and Public Policy at Case Western Reserve University. His research interests include the diffusion of technological innovations, national technology policy, government-industry relationships in technology development and use, the management of innovation in industry, and indicators of scientific and technological development.