NIST GCR
02-829
Universities as Research Partners
Executive Summary
This study examines the
contributions by university scientists who collaborate in industry research
funded by the Advanced Technology Program (ATP). Interviews were held
with responsible officers from the industrial firms that had participated
in the ATP research. In general, universities are more likely to be invited
to participate as partners or as subcontractors in research into “new” science;
that is, research that is expected to be difficult because it is intended
to broaden the frontiers of knowledge. Projects with university involvement
experience more difficulty and delay, presumably because the projects
are more ambitious technically. The projects also are less likely to
be aborted in failure. When compared with joint venture projects, single
company applicant projects without university participation are more
likely to have difficulty in accomplishing the technical goals, and thus
are more likely to be aborted. Caution must be used in generalizing the
findings of this exploratory inquiry because of the small sample size.
Background
Industry-university research
collaboration has been increasing for several decades. As several earlier
studies showed, there are more research joint ventures, more joint R&D
centers (up 60 percent in the 1980s), and more members of science faculties
who wish to work with industry. Business often wants access to particular
faculty members or to research that is complementary to their own research.
University faculty and administrators welcome the money they expect from
the collaboration. For universities, the disadvantages may be diversion
from teaching, the conflict between industrial secrecy and traditional
academic openness, and the intramural friction that can arise when some
departments or schools receive sizeable funding.
Issues
The survey was designed
to explore three questions:
- What roles do universities
play in research partnerships?
- Do universities enhance
the research efficiency of research partnerships?
- Do universities affect
the development and commercialization of industrial technology?
Method
New data at the project
level were collected from a sample of ATP-funded research projects, some
projects with university collaboration and some without. (This approach,
however, will not yield a complete picture of university-industry collaborations
because projects receiving ATP financial assistance are only a small
subset.) ATP-funded projects are more likely to be perceived as having
high social value, being generally riskier, involving generic technology,
and at such an early stage of development that the technology is not
easily appropriable. From April 1991 through October 1997 ATP funded
352 projects. This population was winnowed to a sample of 54 after various
criteria were applied. Forty-seven of the 54 contact persons responded
to the inquiry. Twenty-nine were involved in joint venture projects,
of which 21 had university involvement. Eighteen were involved in single
company applicant projects, of which nine had university participation,
and the rest had universities involved as subcontractors. In all there
were 12 information technology, 12 biotechnology, 9 materials, 6 manufacturing,
3 electronics, 1 energy and environment, and 4 chemicals (and other continuous
manufacturing) projects.
Role of University
In ATP-funded joint venture
projects, universities participate as partners or as subcontractors.
In ATP-funded single company applicant projects, universities participate
as subcontractors only.
Difficulty in Acquiring Knowledge
Respondents with a university
participant were more likely to report difficulty in acquiring and assimilating
basic knowledge needed for progress toward the project’s goal. These
projects may be closer to “new” science and that may be the
reason universities were invited to participate in the first place. The
industrial contact people also indicated that experience working with
a university diminished the difficulty of acquiring new knowledge. Larger
projects had less difficulty. Projects in the electronics area experienced
substantially more difficulty.
Research Efficiencies
Project contact persons
were asked several questions to explore whether the presence of university
personnel was associated with greater efficiency: Were more research
problems encountered—conceptual, equipment, or personnel-related—than
were expected, and how many? What percent of research time, in retrospect,
was unproductive? What percent of financial resources was unproductive?
No clear pattern with respect to universities emerged from the responses,
except that when universities were subcontractors to joint ventures there
were more personnel problems. But joint ventures with university partners
were less likely to respond to the survey, so the picture remains murky.
As for unproductive use
of time and money, electronics projects ranked highest and manufacturing
lowest. Biotechnology projects reported less unproductive expenditures
but more unproductive time. Larger firms that led projects did better
in using time and money effectively—or at least that was how larger
firms viewed their own efforts.
Accelerated Development and Commercialization
One question asked was
whether projects with university participation were more likely to recognize
new applications of the technology being developed and were more likely
to develop and commercialize new technology sooner than expected. The
responses indicated that university participation seemed to have no impact
on the generation of new applications. However, the data also suggested
that projects with larger ATP contributions were more likely to develop
unanticipated applications. Projects with university participation, however,
were less likely to finish sooner than expected, perhaps because the
projects tended to focus on more ambitious research. Single company applicant
projects were more optimistic than joint venture projects about finishing
early, and the most optimistic were single company applicant projects
with no university involvement. By sectors, research in information technology,
chemicals, materials, and energy and the environment were more likely
to commercialize sooner than expected, and manufacturing, electronics
and biotechnology were less likely to commercialize sooner than expected.
Various potential misconceptions
also were uncovered. Those who participated in projects in which universities
took part experienced difficulties in acquiring and assimilating basic
knowledge. It is true that university participation may create problems,
but the opposite may be true: that having a university partner creates
greater awareness of research problems. University participation, it
was found, especially in ATP-funded projects, generally meant that the
project would end successfully, albeit in a longer time span than projects
without university participation. The other partners in the venture saw
universities as taking on the role of ombudsman with the task of anticipating
and explaining the complexities of the research. Additionally, projects
with larger budgets take on research of a broader scope, and with larger
budgets more personnel are needed. With more personnel more difficulties
arise. However, projects with larger budgets also tend to focus energy
on fundamental research rather than on pursuit of new applications of
that research.
These conclusions should
be taken with caution. They reflect only statistical associations—albeit
robust ones—but not dispositive demonstrations of causality. There
is no general theoretical foundation for research of this kind. The concepts
are new and the survey questions are exploratory in construction. This
study sets the stage for more research to be carried out on the general
subject of universities as research partners before causal relationships
and statistically significant results can be determined.
Return to Contents or
go to next section.
Date created: October 18,
2002
Last updated:
August 2, 2005
|
