Bringing New Ideas to Market
Knowledge Transfer, Open Innovation, and the Role of Federal Agencies and Universities in U.S. Economic Competitiveness
SOURCE: flickr/thinkpublic
The Obama administration’s push for innovation to boost economic competitiveness requires better strategic links between federal agencies and universities.
Innovation Clusters
In regions around the country, clusters of universities and high-tech companies partner with local and regional governments to boost tech-based economic growth and create good jobs. The two best examples are Silicon Valley, the hotbed of computer technology in northern California, and the metropolitan Boston area connected by Route 128, which is a nexus of biotechnology research and development. For a primer on innovation clusters, see our “Regional Centers of Innovation 101.”
The federal government provides large sums of funding for basic scientific research, and boasts a variety of different programs to help companies and state and local governments prepare executives and workers for employment at young, innovative companies seeking to commercialize this research. But the federal government lacks a comprehensive approach for innovation policy. What’s needed is today is a clear-eyed blueprint for developing more innovative clusters around the country that links together federal programs, academic institutions, companies, and local and regional policymakers. In this series, Science Progress will feature bold ideas from innovation experts across the nation for how the Obama administration can develop an effective innovation policy that creates jobs, enables economic mobility, enhances science, and grows the county’s competitiveness.
When the White House communicates to federal agencies about science and technology policies for the 2011 budget, as Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag and Office of Science and Technology Policy director John Holdren did this past August, the agencies take such guidance seriously. This year the guidance focused on the outcomes of research, not on the research agenda itself. Specifically, the OMB and OSTP directors raised four practical challenges:
- “Applying science and technology strategies to drive economic recovery, job creation and economic growth”
- “Promoting innovative energy technologies”
- “Applying biomedical science and information technology to help Americans live longer, healthier lives, while reducing health care costs”
- “Assuring we have the technologies needed to protect our troops, citizens, and interests.”
These challenges focus on the knowledge flow, diffusion of information, and technology transfer required for effective application and commercialization of science and engineering advances. To exploit the competitive advantage that the United States has in basic R&D, we must make a major commitment to knowledge and technology transfer efforts, and support innovation in its fullest sense.
To be responsive, federal agencies need to prioritize a coherent strategy for knowledge transfer and application and address intermediate organizational structures that accelerate the transfer and application process. This is no easy task. Decades of focusing on research and the outputs it generates, such as journal articles, patents, and licenses, has not prepared the agencies to identify organizational structures that translate knowledge and measure impacts, such as jobs created or lives improved.
As a former research administrator in the National Science Foundation (Sociology) and at Cornell University and Washington State Universities, and as an agricultural experiment station director and then dean of agricultural, human, and natural resource sciences, I know the disciplinary mindset of research administrators as well as scientists and engineers. Within universities, we also must work to change this mindset.
Processes of knowledge translation, transfer, and communication are often unique to each agency or very specialized even within departments of each agency. Take the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with its Rural Development outreach programs, the Agricultural Research Service with its technology transfer function, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture with its State Cooperative Extension programs. Coordination of strategy even within a single agency is exceedingly difficult.
One approach, however, is to strengthen the links, cooperation, and partnerships of the technology extension and outreach programs and functions of the federal government and universities around the country. USDA and state Cooperative Extension programs, the SBA Small Business Development Centers, and the Department of Commerce Manufacturing Extension Partnerships, administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, all need more professionals co-located in communities where they meet the four challenges set by OMB and OSTP every day. As place-based organizations, they would have a distinct competitive advantage to achieving the desired outcomes.
At the same time, the federal government needs to embrace the open innovation model as a way to accelerate the technology and knowledge transfer process from idea to execution, from laboratories to businesses and consumer use. The open innovation model assumes high levels of communication, careful listening, reciprocity among the parties, mutual commitment, and serious engagement to achieve the goals. It also requires proximity, as well as virtual connectivity, to accomplish place-based programming, as Orszag points out.
Innovation and knowledge transfer have a rich history in America. An early application was the state Cooperative Extension Services, which sent county agents into agricultural areas to demonstrate new methods to farmers, their families, and communities; to listen to farmers about local problems; and to link relevant university faculty and researchers, who provided research-based solutions. The goal was to provide educational and technical assistance about agriculture, natural resources, and nutrition and consumer economics, as well as community-building skills to rural residents who could not attend the university.
A similar philosophy created the Small Business Development Centers, often co-located in universities, community colleges, or nonprofit organizations, to provide technical assistance, access to capital, coaching, and counseling to strengthen local small businesses. In North Carolina, the governor’s office recently called on our Small Business and Technology Development Center to lead a statewide job retention and growth initiative which will help the state’s existing small-to-medium-sized businesses enhance their competitiveness.
A third example reflects the commitment to manufacturing from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, called the Manufacturing Extension Program, in which nonprofit organizations and universities provide engineering outreach and technical assistance, training, and educational support to the manufacturing sector. Professionals in this program reside within local communities and support economic growth.
Each of these organizations practices the translation of expert knowledge into usable knowledge for their constituencies.
The 21st century goals of economic development, “green” energy lifestyles, improved health and well being, and better national security do not require new extension services. Rather, they require agencies to revisit organizational mechanisms already in place, to be creative in adopting what works, to fund, and to deliver needed programs.
The Department of Energy does not need to invent an Energy Extension Service to achieve energy conservation in homes, agricultural, commercial, and industrial sectors. The adoption of new technologies, the use of energy conservation practices, and the implementation of renewable energy strategies could benefit from added investments in Cooperative Extension, Small Business Development Centers, and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership to focus on these priorities. Inter-agency grants or cooperative agreements could provide funding. These well-established programs have already earned the trust of consumers, community leaders, business and industry leaders, non-profits, and governmental partners.
Universities also must reciprocate with innovative programs of their own. And they are. Witness the establishment of incubators for new startups, business accelerators, and joint venture efforts at commercializing inventions. The federal government provides much of the basic R&D money, to be sure, but universities and the private sector are now working more closely to commercialize the results.
Programs exist at many public universities to provide targeted educational programs. An example at North Carolina State University is the Small Business and Technology Development Center, which provides startups with training on “Becoming an Investor-ready Entrepreneur.” It also provides investors with a course called “The Power of Angel Investing.” Bringing these two sectors together can yield increased capital for new startups. Additionally, the SBTDC provided 48 workshops in 2009 on “Business Success in Tough Times” in which strategies for marketing, managing finances, and improved manufacturing processes are the focus.
With over 70 active startup companies and 110 commercialized products adding to the global economy, NC State, and its Centennial Campus, is among the nation’s most significant entrepreneurial universities. An example is the success of LaamScience, a startup company developing a textile coating that kills most viruses and bacteria when exposed to light. The technology, licensed from NC State University, has multiple markets—surgical and respirator masks, hospital disposables and supplies, and filters and air purifiers.
NC State’s Industrial Extension Service, which manages the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, provides training and technical assistance to increase the competitiveness of manufacturing firms, the health sector, and state agencies through Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, and the International Standards Organization, or ISO certification.
These organizations, as well as others within the university, can also provide consulting services, feasibility studies, market analysis, supply chain analysis, and access to student internships.
An integrative approach might establish a research collaborative in which private companies join and annually provide funds for pre-commercial research, advise the faculty and graduate students on industry priorities, and evaluate the results at annual reviews, for example, in the NC State’s Nonwovens Cooperative Research Center.
Evaluation is also useful for feedback to companies. The evaluation of company processes and continuous improvement can lead to greater efficiencies and awards of excellence such as the Shingo Prize in North Carolina and the National Baldridge Award.
Examples of impact from the Industrial Extension Service include the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, which implemented lean office processes and increased the number of air quality permits processed by 52 percent, and provided them 40 percent quicker, with no added staff. Another example is the nonprofit RLCB, formerly the Raleigh Lions Club for the Blind, which showed a $4 million increase in sales, gains in productivity, and new products as a result of IES services. RCLB also added 40 jobs in one year, including a full R&D department.
Demonstrations, educational efforts, and technical assistance have a long track record of generating successful diffusion and adoption of innovations. It is the practical application of science and technology via these knowledge transfer mechanisms and partnerships that builds on research and drives economic recovery, job creation, and economic growth.
These programs deserve high priority for continued and additional funding as agencies and universities prioritize their budget requests for 2011.
James J. Zuiches is Vice Chancellor of Extension, Engagement and Economic Development at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.
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