The Advanced Technology Program Assessing Outcomes (2001) / Chapter Skim
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Panel IV: Assessing Progress: Case Study Cluster
Panel IV: Assessing Progress: Case Study Cluster
Pages 145-159
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From page 145... ...
The second reviews case study methodologies for evaluations, and the third focuses on econom~c returns in medical technologies. As background information, he called attention to three recent ATP studies assessing the ATP program: Estimating Future Consumer Benefits from ATP-Funded Innovation: The Case of Digital Data Storages Managing Technical Risk: Understanding Private Sector Decision Making on Early Stage Technology-based Projectsi9 Performance of Completed Projects: Status Report Number 120 i~ D
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The company, PPL Therapeutics, became widely known a few years ago for producing Dolly, the cloned sheep. Cloning of animals is a necessary step in order to multiply quickly the amounts of the various pharmaceutical products that the original transgenic animals yield.
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In this story the Big Bad Wolf represents these financial threats. There are five little pigs, not three, because that is the number of the first cloned litter of transgenic pigs.
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Once we understood that the program was open to us, we submitted an ATP proposal, "Cloning Pigs: A Solution to Overcoming Rejection in Organs for Transplantation." Its goals were fourfold: 1. develop gene knockout technology in primary pig cells, using a knockout gene, the alpha 1,3-galactosl transferase gene; 2.
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From page 149... ...
Market Failure and Spillovers The market failure justifications for government support of R&D are well rehearsed and widely discussed in the innovation economics and technology policy literature. Three main market failures are ubiquitous for R&D: increasing returns, from both externalities and indivisibilities (such as fixed R&D costs)
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From page 150... ...
By extension, a central issue for policy debate, program design, and program evaluation is whether the ATP succeeds at fostering spillovers and how it might increase them. Research Support: ATP Awards Do Generate Technical Advance and Positive Spillovers From the ATP Economic Assessment Office, there is a growing body of research evidence that ATP projects do indeed foster technical advances, increase the competitiveness of participating firms, and generate positive spillovers.
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Direct Evaluation and Counterfactuals Existing evaluation methods begin by estimating the direct effects of ATP on its participants (gathering data through interviews, surveys, document review and/ or expert forecasts) using metrics such as revenues, productivity gains, resource savings, decreased product maintenance costs, improved product quality, or reduced time required to launch new products.
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Snowballs: Mapping Technology Diffusion To explicitly investigate both market spillovers and knowledge spillovers through case studies, the first methodological extension we developed was a combination of a snowball interviewing process to identify and then include in our interviewing key customers, suppliers and competitors for market spilloverscoupled with patent and publication citation analysis to identify organizations outside the target markets for knowledge spillovers. We are thereby mapping the technology diffusion process at least one layer into the broader network by including in the case non-participating customers, competitors, suppliers, and other .
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CERN, though out front, was not alone in seeking relatively easier access to widely dispersed electronic information. In other words, organizations operating in similar technological areas tend to face similar innovations possibilities frontiers.
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H gingham, A Framework for Estimating the National Economic Benefits of ATP Funding of Medical Technologies: Preliminary Applications to Tissue Engineering Projects Funded from 1990 to 1996, prepared by the Research Triangle Institute for the Advanced Technology Program, NIST GCR 97-737, April 1998.
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From page 155... ...
To address that question, they borrowed a technique used by Robert W Fogel in 1964.23 Fogel wondered what the economy would have looked like in 1890 if railroads had never been developed that is, if the defender technologies, such as rivers, canals, and roads, had prevailed as the nation's dominant transportation networks.
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Using this measurement, it is then possible to adjust for quality of life, in calculating society' s benefit from medical technology. Summary of Findings: Higher Social Returns The study estimated the expected social return on the public (ATP)
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For this reason public incentives to the private sector are important in pursuing these technologies. Because the seven technologies studied have not yet been applied, the study is a prospective one, based on preliminary results and on the expectations of the innovators involved and other informed people.
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If the ATP were not in place, addressing the problem of under-investment in R&D, we would need to invent something much like the ATP. QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE Social Return Lewis Branscomb observed that private investments in R&D, like public investments, also produce excessive social returns.
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Together these failures provide even greater support for the need for public investments like those made by the ATP. Funding Enabling Technologies In response, Rosalie Ruegg explained that the ATP's purpose goes beyond merely compensating for the "funding gap." In focusing on "enabling technologies," ATP funds technologies that are expected to have broader than average spillovers.
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