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3 Understanding the Pathways from Research to Innovation
Pages 37-50

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From page 37...
... • The translation of research discoveries into economically and socially viable innovations frequently is subject to a time lag that in many cases reflects the often prohibitive cost and risk associated with proof-of-concept research. As discussed in 37
From page 38...
... THE LINKS BETWEEN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION As discussed briefly in Chapter 1 and in greater detail in Chapter 4, measuring the economic and other returns of research is not an easy task. Attempts to trace major innovations back to their original supporting research have rarely if ever revealed a direct flow of "money in, value out." In the majority of cases, such exercises illuminate a tangled and complex yet rich and fertile path from the original investment to the final impacts on society.
From page 39...
... The key players in transformative breakthroughs often are welltrained researchers from diverse backgrounds who know the right people -- and many of them. The right people are other talented researchers who can draw on their knowledge of diverse fields to bring fresh perspectives to stale problems.
From page 40...
... Locations with the best growing conditions were the first to market hybrid corn. When hybrid corn reached 10 per cent of the total corn grown in the United States, superior hybrids and additional farm machinery for harvesting corn allowed other farmers to achieve profit by grow ing it.
From page 41...
... This pattern of engagement has benefited from a two-way flow of ideas and people between academic and industrial research settings, and has included extensive patenting and licensing of university inventions to industry. Contributing to this pattern of collaboration have been both the historical structure of the national U.S.
From page 42...
... Beginning in the 1970s, Shimomura received funding from the National Sci ence Foundation to explore the biochemistry of this luminescence further. In the 1980s, Shimomura's studies attracted the attention of a young investiga tor at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution named Douglas Prasher, who wanted to attach GFP to the bacterial proteins he was studying so they would glow brightly when expressed in a cell.
From page 43...
... These channels operate in parallel and are interdependent. Moreover, the relative importance of different channels of interaction and information flow between academic and industrial researchers appears to vary considerably among different research fields.
From page 44...
... universities, during the 1970s. There is little evidence that increased faculty engagement in entrepreneurial activities during the post-1980 period, including the formation of new firms and patenting and licensing of inventions, negatively affected the scholarly productivity of leading researchers (Ding and Choi, 2011)
From page 45...
... Appendix B elaborates on the relationship between university research and industrial innovation. THE UNPREDICTABLE TIMELINE FROM RESEARCH TO SOCIETAL IMPACT In many cases, a significant time lag separates the original research from the commercialization of an innovation incorporating the knowledge generated by that research.
From page 46...
... In that sense, the time lag associated with proof-of-concept research is particularly important in the race to commercialize research discoveries with immediately obvious applications. The complexity of modern technologies has increased the difficulty of translating basic science advances into economically and socially valuable technologies.
From page 47...
... Encouraging the mobility of researchers across national boundaries as well as among domestic research institutions remains a challenge for most nations; however, a UK Royal Society report indicates that Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States attracted the 1  Citizen Science has been defined by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, which helped pioneer the concept, as "projects in which volunteers partner with scientists to answer real-world questions." More information is available at: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/citscitoolkit/about/definition [June 2014]
From page 48...
... Because of the interconnection among fields, neglect of one field such that the capabilities and infrastructure in that field are exceeded elsewhere could impede domestic progress in other fields or stifle innovation. The importance of nurturing all fields of scientific research to foster transformative innovations is illustrated by the case study in Box 3-6.
From page 49...
... This discovery not only provided support for the Big Bang theory but also yielded an understanding of the physics of the early universe that enabled predictions of the distribution of matter from the microwave background radiation forward and backward in time. The discovery was made using a statistical method -- the false-discovery rate -- to detect the oscillations.


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