EDITORS' C O L U M N
THE
KEY WORDS to use today are
"technology transfer." Since the U.S.'s heavy investment in the space program, we have been concerned with how to transfer technology from its place of development in space and defense R&D to other sectors, public and private. The latest spur to these ends brings in industry more directly and is embodied in two complementary programs that have been instituted by the National Bureau of Standards and the National Science Foundation. Newly promulgated is NSF's "Experimental R&D Incentives Program," which will be carried out in cooperation with NBS's "Experimental Technology Improvement Program" started earlier this year. The NBS program will work primarily through industry, and the NSF expects universities to play a prominent role with industry, industrial associations, profit and nonprofit research institutes, and state and local governments in various joint endeavors. Emphasis must be placed on the word "experimental," according to C. B. Smith who is director of the NSF program. There is $18.5 million allocated, and it is expected that it will take several years to establish any results. What does the program involve? Projects are to be devised to determine by experimentation what types of innovation incentive mechanisms the Federal government might use to augment the application of science and technology. The aim is to promote a more rapid transfer to technology to public and private; sectors of the economy and, in the long run, to foster more non-Federal investment in R&D. NSF stresses the need for specific proposals worked out with the Foundation staff and also for dialog and ideas from all. Project proposals arc; expected to identify barriers to technology innovation flow and to suggest experi-
ments to test specific Federal incentives that might overcome these barriers. An obvious example is the existence of many small traditional industrial firms that may lack knowledge of some kinds of high technology that might be useful. Blind spots and blockages to technology transfer abound, and the complex problems involved are difficult to identify, define, and understand. In fact, one is inclined to think that clear definitions of problems would lead much of the way toward solutions. NSF must agree as it will fund background studies in some industries as part of its R&D incentives program. That industrial R&D has been curtailed in the recent economic downturn and is not yet increasing at any great rate in an improved business climate is cause for concern. According to David Kiefer of Chemical and Engineering News, the current 3 to 3 y 2 % of total sales volume now allocated to industrial R&D is not likely to rise soon to the levels of 4 to 4 y 2 % of sales that were characteristic 10 years ago. At the same time that some U.S. companies are curtailing R&D at home, they are investing in R&D overseas to remain competitive in world markets. Some experts foresee more and more technology transfer from overseas to the U.S. rather than the other way around. The overall slipping of the U.S. lead in technological innovation is, of course, the problem the NSF and NBS industrial R&D incentives programs are designed to tackle. Overall, the long-range aim is to improve the U.S. position in world markets. It seems ironic that at a time when, according to some observers, other nations are learning to untie politics and science and forge ahead in the use of new technology, the U.S. seems committed to greater Federal involvement with the concomitant bureaucratic red tape. The Federal R&D incentives programs, however, should foster further interplay between academia and industry which is greatly to be desired.
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