Future R&D Environments A Report for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (2002) / Chapter Skim
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3 Contextual Factors
3 Contextual Factors
Pages 33-48
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From page 33... ...
The system has evolved since the end of World War II, and not only does the committee expect it to continue to do so, but there are indications that the rate of change will accelerate as a result of significant changes in the environment for R&D. Federal funding of curiosity-driven research is under pressure, changes in corporate structure and the emergence of new industries are giving rise to changes in the organization of industrial research, patterns of private investment in R&D are changing, the globalization of R&D is giving rise to new competitive pressures, universities are becoming more entrepreneurial, and the career choices 33
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From page 34... ...
NIST not only supports technology development, it is also responsible for metrology, the science of weights and measures, which underlies the development of technical standards relied on by industry. In 2000, the federal government provided 49 percent of the funding for basic research, industry contributed 34 percent, and another 18 percent was provided by the universities, other nonprofits, and nonfederal governments.
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From page 35... ...
Spending on health dominates, accounting for almost half of the federal nondefense research budget. Health research has also shown by far the fastest growth, compared with other fields of research, which as a group have had nearly flat appropriations in recent years, as measured in constant dollars.
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From page 36... ...
As corporate research centers continue to decline because of mergers or pressure to maximize short-term profits, even more basic research will have to shift to universities. Since there is nothing in recent trends to indicate that industry will increase its support for university research to a substantial amount (despite a few well-publicized individual university-industry linkages)
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From page 37... ...
One benefit of a goaloriented approach is that it tends to encourage multidisciplinary efforts, which have always faced difficulties in the academic world, but it will be a challenge to ensure that high-risk, long-term, or open-ended research efforts are not seriously impeded. The interest of universities in creating intellectual property and the growing attractiveness of entrepreneurship with its financial rewards for both faculty and ~NSF, Federal Funds for Research and Development: Fiscal Years 1999, 2000, and 2001, NSF 01328.
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From page 38... ...
The program specifies areas of interest (for FY 2002, for example, it lists 19 research areas, including integrated nanosensors, membranes based on active molecular transport mechanisms, fuel cells, and the behavior of scaled-up information networks) , requires the involvement of researchers from more than one discipline, encourages multiuniversity collaboration, and makes clear that successful applications will have to either involve joint university-industry research or provide in some other way for transferring technology to the private sector.
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From page 39... ...
The general trend to downsizing or eliminating central research laboratories and decentralizing research units to product divisions was noted above. As a result, industrial research facilities are likely to be more geographically dispersed and culturally diversified, reflecting the growing global reach of investments.
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From page 40... ...
Superimposed on this dynamic is a large resource drain in the form of a web of legal battles over patents, together with uncertainty surrounding the ultimate resolution of questions about what is patentable in this field. Finally, industry associations are playing, and will continue to play, an increasingly important role in guiding the direction of R&D by developing industrywide roadmaps modeled after the successful example of the semiconductor industry.
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From page 41... ...
To attract and retain star performers, they will need to find ways to provide sufficient compensation, which could make it difficult for organizations that have rigid pay scales to compete for top technical talent. The committee believes that the recent cataclysmic decline of some high-tech sectors is likely to be a temporary situation and that the private sector will continue to be a very strong competitor for talent because of its ability to offer significant financial rewards for scientists in hot fields.
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From page 42... ...
While it is unlikely that the traditional departmental structure will change, past practice, particularly in the technical fields, of filling students' programs with required courses in their major will have to give way to new practices, giving students greater latitude and encouraging them to select courses in other departments. This transition may be eased by the increasing need in research for interdepartmental cooperation to be successful in attracting the new kinds of grant funding from either government (the Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative and the NSF National Nanoscale Initiative are examples mentioned earlier)
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From page 43... ...
While the proliferation of start-up companies may deplete the technical talent available for basic research, successful technical entrepreneurs can have a major impact on our technology-driven economy. Besides turning technology into businesses, some successful technical entrepreneurs become serial entrepreneurs, starting other companies or investing their profits in other start-ups.
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From page 44... ...
A third concern continues to affect the public reaction to government funding of programs that blur the distinction between basic research and application namely, concern about "corporate welfare" or the appropriateness of government intervention in areas where the market should determine winners and losers. The perennial debate over the appropriateness and effectiveness of the Department of Commerce's Advanced Technology Program illustrates the problem well.~° A fourth concern is that the increasing emphasis on technological innovation, with its focus on short-term goals, will drive out funding for basic research, which is long-term and not focused on practical goals.
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From page 45... ...
It is likely, moreover, that the federal government will continue to encourage investment through tax policy for example, tax credits for R&D, R&D partnerships, and preferential capital gains tax. Although the United States has generally been sensitive to business interests in the area of regulation, changes in industrial organization, the global character of the economy, and rapidly emerging technologies will present a number of new challenges for the regulatory system.
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From page 46... ...
The GE-Honeywell attempted merger raised another issue the difference in views in the United States and the European Union over whether mergers that allow horizontal integration across business or technology sectors violate antitrust principles by providing the merged entity with the ability to gain excessive market share within one or more of the individual sectors of which it is comprised (which was the position of the European Union)
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From page 47... ...
For example, the new opportunities that computers and communication technologies offer for adding value to public data and information by reorganizing them and mining them are giving rise to an explosion of copyrighted databases. The government will face pressures to cut back on its efforts to refine raw data, exploiting the same technologies to make the data easier to use, and it may even be less aggressive or less accommodating in making raw data easily available, in order to avoid competing with the private sector.
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From page 48... ...
The failure of the United States to gain a significant share of the global market in cellular telephony is a good example of the price of not moving quickly. Today, product standards are voluntary in the United States but are sometimes import requirements in other countries.
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