Technology Transfer Systems in the United States and Germany Lessons and Perspectives (1997) / Chapter Skim
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Comparison of Major Technology Transfer Institutions
Comparison of Major Technology Transfer Institutions
Pages 9-28
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government-funded basic research is statistically subsumed under specific socioeconomic objectives. Nevertheless, the separate classification of basic research in the German public R&D portfolio and the large claim of German academic research on total public R&D funds testify to the comparatively heavy emphasis German research policy places on basic research.
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The Max Planck institutes are characterized by their public base funding and their near-exclusive basic research orientation. Although they have no real institutional counterpart in the United States, their functional equivalents can be found in several publicly funded, U.S.
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; AiF = Arbeitsgemeinschaft industrieller Forschungsvereinigungen (Federation of Industrial Research Associations)
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By comparison, German academic research institutions are fewer in number, larger, and more homogeneous in size, administration, and management as well as in the overall breadth of their research portfolios. With few exceptions, all German universities have a public status.
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dIncludes grants from nonprofit organizations and international organizations, restricted gifts by private individuals, and other sources not elsewhere classified. SOURCES: Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie (1996)
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Contracts and grants generally cover only direct costs of personnel and additional equipment. As a result, the overhead costs related to research supported by these funds must de facto be covered by institutional base funds provided by the states.
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This share is likely to increase over time. As already noted, German universities have to cofinance the overhead costs related to research contracts and grants with institutional base funds.
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In consequence, German and American universities today are engaged extensively in technology transfer to private industry and have developed a wide range of mechanisms to execute or facilitate that transfer. Informal Contacts, Consulting, and Personnel Exchange In both systems, informal contacts between university researchers and industry researchers and managers via meetings, telephone conversations, and so forth are critical to successful technology transfer.
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research universities, industrial research personnel often play valuable roles as technical advisors to masters- and doctoral-level students and as members of advisory groups for whole departments. However, in the United States, university faculty almost always assume primary supervisory responsibility for their students.
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research universities have developed effective policies, practices, and institutional frameworks (such as UIRCs) for engaging private companies in mutually beneficial cooperative research, there is ample evidence that a great many more U.S.
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However, in contrast to UIRCs, most industrial support of An-Institute research takes the form of contracts, not grants.15 In summary, UIRCs and other U.S. university-affiliated research institutes and the German An-Institutes represent similar institutional responses to the opportunities for increased interaction with industry and the constraints, or problems, associated with pursuing such activities within the traditional framework of academic departments.
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federal R&D facilities is spent for defense purposes. The 16 German Helmholtz Centers (formerly called Großforschungseinrichtungen [GFEs]
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Likewise, in Germany, the Helmholtz Centers have been encouraged to diversify their research portfolios and expand their interactions with private companies in response to declining demand and funding for research in fields related to civilian nuclear energy, the former primary mission of the largest Helmholtz Centers.
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Currently, the National Institutes of Health account for the lion's share of all licensing revenues earned by federal agencies for technologies developed within their laboratories. German Helmholtz Centers, Blue List Institutes, and Departmental Institutes The main instrument of technology transfer for German Helmholtz Centers is formal cooperation with industrial partners on projects of common interest.
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In the United States, most of the functions performed by Max Planck institutes are distributed among research universities, select federal laboratories, and a diverse population of privately held university-affiliated and independent research institutes.
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A question that must be answered is whether it makes more sense for the large U.S. defense-oriented federal laboratories and the German Helmholtz Centers to be downsized to fit their reduced traditional public missions or to be diversified or reoriented instead.
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THE FRAUNHOFER MODEL In Germany, contract research is conducted mainly by the 46 institutes of the semipublic Fraunhofer Society, which receives about 1 percent of the total national R&D budget. Fraunhofer institutes receive between 20 and 30 percent of their budgets in the form of base institutional funds from the federal government; the exact amount depends on their success in generating sufficient contract work for public and private clients.
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that is truly comparable to the German Fraunhofer institutes. Instead, most of the combined contract R&D and technology transfer functions performed by the Fraunhofer institutes in Germany are carried out in the United States by a large, diverse, and highly dispersed population of nonprofit and for-profit R&D organizations, including a plethora of privately held affiliated and independent nonprofit institutions, several large private R&D and management consulting firms, and the research units of some U.S.
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Consortia appear to be organized in different ways in the two countries. In Germany, there are about 100 industrial research associations, representing about 50,000 enterprises, joined under the umbrella organization of the Federation of Industrial Research Associations (Arbeitsgemeinschaft industrieller Forschungsvereinigungen [AiF]
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U.S. consortia are likely to include independent R&D organizations, universities, and federal laboratories in addition to private firms.
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