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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." Transportation Research Board. 1999. Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration -- Special Report 256. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11380.
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1
Introduction

Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will know how.

(CHINESE PROVERB)


Innovation within the highway industry is important because it can help improve performance and safety; reduce environmental impacts; and reduce costs for the construction, operation, and maintenance of the nation’s highway system. The importance of innovation is magnified as highway travel demand increases with little expansion of highway capacity, and with continuing growth in the repair and rehabilitation needs of heavily used highways. Approximately $101 billion is spent each year on building, operating, and maintaining the nation’s highways (FHWA 1998). Now that the Interstate Highway System has been completed, state and local highway agencies have shifted their focus toward preserving and renewing the existing system. The needs in this regard are great. For example, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimates that during the next 20 years, nearly $178 billion will be required to significantly improve the condition of bridges (FHWA 1997). Accelerating the use of innovations that achieve even modest savings in materials, equipment, or processes can yield signifi-

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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." Transportation Research Board. 1999. Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration -- Special Report 256. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11380.
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cant benefits to the highway industry, particularly as those innovations are adopted by more highway agencies across many projects.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

State and local highway agencies face a growing backlog of highway repair, maintenance, and reconstruction needs on many key sections of the nation’s highway system. These sections often serve high traffic levels and cannot be shut down for rehabilitation or reconstruction without causing major disruptions for road users and adjoining communities. Innovations in construction, materials, equipment, and construction traffic management could help reduce the need to close highways for extended periods of time, and thereby avoid considerable inconvenience and increased delays for road users, major community disruption, and significant economic loss.

Generally speaking, innovation is aimed at lower cost, higher quality, or improved performance. “Whatever else may be involved, innovation only occurs when ideas are used; i.e., it must include deployment … and use” (Kash 1989, 24). In other words, successful innovation requires implementation. Research is needed to provide new products, methods, materials, and practices for the highway industry, and technology transfer is needed to ensure that research results are implemented by state and local highway agencies, contractors, materials suppliers, and other components of the highway industry.1 The purpose of this report is to examine innovation and technology transfer activities within the highway industry and to provide suggestions for improving and measuring the performance of FHWA’s technology transfer efforts.

Achieving innovation is a complex process involving many people and activities, with the ultimate aim of implementation and use of research products in an operating environment (see Chapter 2 for a discussion of the innovation process). The innovation can be a new product or process, different materials for product components, or even a reorganization of the way tasks are performed to achieve efficiency. Tornatzky et al. (1990) describe innovation as both the new tool and the process of getting the tool used.

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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." Transportation Research Board. 1999. Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration -- Special Report 256. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11380.
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As important as innovation is, its implementation is not automatic in either the private or the public sector. Moreover, successful implementation is achieved differently in the two sectors, and technology transfer must account for these differences. Private-sector or commercial innovation focuses on using research results to develop commercial products offered for sale; market forces and progress control such innovation. The market provides a profit incentive for “fashioning new products, improving the performance of old ones, or producing products at lower cost” (Kline and Rosenberg 1986, 275). This incentive is not as significant in the public sector. Implementing innovation in the public sector involves a complex set of incentives that focus on improving performance or reducing cost. However, these incentives are often outweighed by several impediments (as discussed in Chapter 3) that tend to limit the rate at which innovations are adopted. Technology transfer— recently defined as the movement of technological and technology-related organizational know-how among partners (individuals, institutions, and enterprises) (NAE 1997, 2)—can accelerate innovation. Nonetheless, technology transfer and technical assistance programs often encounter considerable resistance, even when directed at specific changes based on sound evidence from well-conducted research and development.

Innovation and technology transfer are a major part of FHWA’s long and distinguished history and are of paramount importance to the agency’s mission, which involves continually improving the nation’s highway system and its intermodal connectors.2 In addition, FHWA recently reorganized to focus more on long-term planning and highway operations than on the construction of new highways. The FHWA headquarters structure now consists of five core business units and eight service business units in a matrix organization. The core business units address infrastructure, operations, planning and environment, motor carrier and highway safety, and federal lands highway. The service business units focus on policy; administration; research, development and technology; professional development; corporate management; civil rights; public affairs; and legal counsel. FHWA also closed its nine regional offices and established four technical resource centers to support the state-level division offices in their primary role of program delivery.3 Each resource center is assigned a group of states in its respec-

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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." Transportation Research Board. 1999. Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration -- Special Report 256. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11380.
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tive geographic area, but specific technical expertise is shared among resource centers and division offices as needed.

FHWA’s stated purpose for reorganizing was to emphasize its technology delivery function at a time when state and local highway agencies need new technologies to address highway problems resulting from heavy use, congestion, and deterioration. With no new major construction programs and fewer restrictions on federal highway funds, FHWA seeks to accomplish technology delivery through leadership and guidance in cooperation with state and local highway agencies. See Chapter 5 for a discussion of the implications of the reorganization for FHWA’s technology transfer program.

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

Chapter 2 describes the innovation process and the role of technology transfer in supporting innovation in the public sector. Chapter 3 provides an overview of innovation and technology transfer in the highway industry. Chapter 4 describes technology transfer activities within the highway industry; it also presents information about successful technology transfer obtained from several recent studies. Chapter 5 describes the committee’s suggested strategy for future FHWA technology transfer efforts. Chapter 6 provides a summary and the committee’s recommendations. In addition, three appendices are provided: Appendix A lists the research and technology delivery functions of FHWA’s five core business units and the Office of Research, Development, and Technology; Appendix B gives examples of user involvement aimed at promot ing technology transfer; and Appendix C describes FHWA’s activities within the various technology transfer areas.

NOTES

  

1. The committee defines the highway industry as including the federal, state, and local government agencies that construct, operate, and maintain U.S. highways and the private companies that supply materials, equipment, and services used by these public agencies.

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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." Transportation Research Board. 1999. Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration -- Special Report 256. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11380.
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2. The five mission goals of FHWA’s 10-year strategic plan are safety, mobility, productivity, protection of the natural environment, and national security (Betsold 1998).

  

3. The resource centers support the state-level division offices by providing leadership on strategic initiatives and expert assistance on technical process and program issues, training, technology transfer, intermodal and interagency coordination, legal services, and civil rights. Each state, as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, has an FHWA division office.

REFERENCES

ABBREVIATIONS

FHWA Federal Highway Administration

NAE National Academy of Engineering


Betsold, R. 1998. The State of Research. Public Roads. Nov.–Dec.

FHWA. 1997. 1997 Status Report of the Nation’s Surface Transportation System: Condition and Performance Report to Congress. U.S. Department of Transportation, Oct.

FHWA. 1998. Highway Statistics 1997. U.S. Department of Transportation, Nov.

Kash, D. E. 1989. Perpetual Innovation: The New World of Innovation. Basic Books, Inc., New York.

Kline, S. J., and N. Rosenburg. 1986. An Overview of Innovation. Pp. 275–305 in The Positive Sum Strategy (R. Landau and N. Rosenburg, eds.). NAE, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.

NAE. 1997. Technology Transfer Systems in the United States and Germany. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Tornatzky, L. G., J. D. Eveland, and M. Fleischer. 1990. Technological Innovation: Definitions and Perspectives. Pp. 9–26 in The Processes of Technological Innovation (L. G. Tornatzky and M. Fleischer, eds.). Lexington Books, Cambridge, Mass.

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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." Transportation Research Board. 1999. Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration -- Special Report 256. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11380.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." Transportation Research Board. 1999. Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration -- Special Report 256. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11380.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." Transportation Research Board. 1999. Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration -- Special Report 256. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11380.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." Transportation Research Board. 1999. Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration -- Special Report 256. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11380.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." Transportation Research Board. 1999. Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration -- Special Report 256. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11380.
×
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TRB Special Report 256 - Managing Technology Transfer: A Strategy for the Federal Highway Administration addresses how the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration selects research products for technology transfer and transfers those products to the highway industry, in particular the state and local agencies that own, operate, and maintain the nation’s highways.

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