The committee conducted this study over a year and a half, meeting four times during 2013. In organizing and conducting the study, we had the benefit of collaboration with a number of other groups within the National Academies, in particular the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy; the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy; the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable; the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership; the Committee on Research Universities; and the Committee on National Statistics’ Panel on Developing Science, Technology, and Innovation Indicators for the Future. All of these groups have conducted studies and conferences relevant to this study.
In addition to the work of these groups, myriad studies have been conducted on quantifying the impacts of research, in particular on the economic returns on investments in research. We began our work with a review of these studies, which were summarized by staff for our discussion. Some of the major studies, including those conducted in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, are included in the annotated bibliography in Appendix C.
We also benefited from many contemporaneous conferences, workshops, and other meetings at which we were represented by committee members or staff. These meetings were organized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, the Brookings Institution, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the Innovation Policy Forum, the Information Technology and
Innovation Foundation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Quebec City Conference, the National Science Foundation, Thomson Reuters, and Time/Qualcomm, among others. Many other individuals and groups shared research with us, including The Battelle Memorial Institute; the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry; and the Working Group on the Value of Biomedical Research of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Scientific Management Review Board.
With the benefit of these many studies and meetings, we were able to focus attention at our own meetings on other specific topics in greater depth. Committee members prepared presentations for us in their relevant areas of expertise and wrote or reviewed text based on those presentations for this report. Staff of National Academies committees conducting relevant studies met with us to discuss the implications of their work for our study.
In addition, we benefited from presentations by and discussions with a number of other experts, including Bruce B. Darling, executive officer, National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council, and former University of California vice president for laboratory management; Regina Dugan, senior vice president for advanced technology and projects, Motorola Mobility, and former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; Lee Fleming, professor, Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, University of California, Berkeley; Robert Fri, Resources for the Future, who chaired National Academies studies reviewing research and development programs of the Department of Energy; Ilan Gur, program director and technology to market senior advisor, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy; and Michael F. Molnar, director, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Manufacturing Office and director, NIST Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office.
With our guidance, staff incorporated our presentations and discussions, along with text prepared by our members, into preliminary drafts of this report. We reviewed these drafts at both our third and fourth meetings, and at many times between these meetings and thereafter, and reached consensus on our findings and overarching conclusion. This report benefited from our own careful review, as well as that of reviewers appointed by the National Academy of Sciences.
