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OCR for page 125
Welcome
Charles Wessner
The National Academies
Dr. Wessner welcomed the participants. Introducing the work of the National
Academies’ Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP), he
stated that a key mission of the Board is to better understand the scientific and
technological elements affecting the competitiveness of the United States. “One
thing we try to work on,” he said, “is how to use the great research investment that
we make in this country to accelerate innovation and advance competitiveness.”
STEP attempts to do this by convening workshops of experts, which “to a surpris-
ing extent” are reflected in actions taken subsequently by the Executive Branch
and by the Congress. “One thing we do to get it right,” he said, “is to ask the users
of technology what they need, rather than to advise them on what works best.”
Another feature of the STEP board’s strategy, he said, is to pay attention
to what is going on across the country and around the world. This is done, in
part, though collaborative symposia with policy makers and business leaders of
other countries. He invited participants to take home copies of STEP symposia,
including reports on bilateral meetings with Japan, India, and Belgium, and other
partners. “There are lessons to be learned from others around the world,” he said,
“and we make an effort to do so.”
Within the United States, he said, there is also much to be learned from best
practices in state and regional economic initiatives. Particularly over the past
decade, the country has witnessed a surge in state initiatives, some of it quite in-
novative. Dr. Wessner noted that the federal government and other organizations
based in Washington, D.C., are well advised to reach out for this knowledge,
because cluster development is by nature a local or regional phenomenon. The
federal government can stimulate clusters and local partnerships, he said, but they
tend to form around cities and organizations created within the states. “Local
125
OCR for page 126
126 FUTURE OF PHOTOVOLTAICS MANUFACTURING
leadership in these case is important,” he said, “and not something that can be
mandated from Washington.” In the field of photovoltaic manufacturing, sig-
nificant synergies have formed between state and federal government initiatives,
including programs in Arizona, Ohio, and Colorado discussed below.
A KEY CHALLENGE:
TO BRING EXISTING TECHNOLOGIES INTO THE MARKETPLACE
The key challenge, he said, is to bring existing technologies into the market-
place. What are the best ways to accelerate the innovation and to actually deploy
it? One way, he said, is through partnerships among government, industry, and
academia. Under the leadership of Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, STEP had
developed a ten-volume set of reports that examine different types of partnerships
for commercializing technology. The general conclusion of these reports, said Dr.
Wessner, is that partnerships are extremely effective when properly structured and
effectively led. These partnerships include innovation award programs, state and
regional consortia, science and technology parks and clusters, and—the topic of
the current symposium—government-industry-academia partnerships. 1
As an example, he cited the experience of the semiconductor partnership
known as SEMATECH that was initiated jointly by the U.S. government and the
semiconductor industry in the 1980s. Without this initiative, he said, and other
steps proposed by the already-existing Semiconductor Research Corporation,
the United States “might well not have the semiconductor industry that we have
today.”
A key question for all technology-based economic initiatives, he said, is
how to keep an industry in the United States once it is established. “In the case
of photovoltaic manufacturing,” he said, “how do we capture the benefits of the
federal stimulus measures and our rising R&D budgets?” One answer, he sug -
gested, is to use both new and existing innovation partnerships to attract and
support U.S.-based firms. He said that the symposium was designed to examine
programs already in place, identify additional opportunities where investments
can be useful, and explore the prospects for cooperative R&D. Additional themes
central to the discussion, he noted, were the importance of developing technical
standards to underpin the new industry and the use of industry roadmaps, such as
those which have been central to the strategy of SEMATECH.
1 National Research Council, Government-Industry Partnerships for the Development of New Tech-
nologies: Summary Report, Charles W. Wessner, ed., Washington, D.C.: The National Academies
Press, 2003.
