Mastering a New Role Shaping Technology Policy for National Economic Performance (1993) / Chapter Skim
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Background: The Postwar U.S. Technology Enterprise
Background: The Postwar U.S. Technology Enterprise
Pages 7-27
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From page 7... ...
economic and commercial technological preeminence was a time when the most urgent scientific and technological challenges to the nation were defined by the Cold War, the space race, a domestic war on cancer, and the quest for world leadership in virtually all areas of scientific research. For most of the past 40 years, the U.S.
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From page 8... ...
National economic development and international competitiveness have rarely been explicit objectives of federal technology policies and investments.)
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From page 9... ...
technology enterprise has had a persistent focus on mobilizing technical resources for national security, space exploration, the cure of disease, the exploitation of nuclear energy, world leadership in basic science, and other primarily public missions.3 With few exceptions it has been assumed that national economic development need not be specifically addressed by federal science and technology policies. Federally funded basic research would provide a rich feedstock of new science for industry to exploit.
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From page 10... ...
universities. During the past 40 years, publicly supported R&D~in the service of federal missions and federal procurement of technologically advanced products, systems, subsystems, and components have contributed significantly to the development of some of the most successful and rapidly growing commer
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From page 11... ...
A1though federal agencies' share of total university-based research has declined in recent years, as of 1991 these agencies collectively funded nearly $10 billion, or 56 percent, of all research on American campuses (National Science Board, 19911. Through their funding of university-based research and their pull on labor markets for advanced-degree scientists and engineers, federal mission agencies also contributed significantly to the expansion of the nation's science and engineering work force during the 1950s and 1960s.7 Most notably, rapid growth of the U.S.
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From page 12... ...
and evaluation" of weapons and other systems having no markets other than military.9 To a large extent, the demands of the national security mission have determined the structure and objectives of the government's system of federal laboratories, particularly in the physical sciences and engineering research. In 1991 DOD laboratories accounted for nearly half of all federal laboratory obligated expenditures as well as 50 percent of all federal laboratory research scientists and engineers.~° National security has also defined the focus of government support of much industrial and university-based engineering research and development.
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R&D 85 80 58 51 59 48 52 33 24 26 Defense share of total federal support of academic engineering research *
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Because of the high engineering intensity of defense-related economic activity, it is estimated that the national security mission currently commands roughly 18 percent of the total U.S. engineering work forced In summary, federal involvement in the technology enterprise through pursuit of agency missions has been extensive.
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From page 15... ...
population of scientists and engineers, made it possible for U.S. firms in these high-growth industries to convert new technological ideas into commercially viable products more rapidly than their competitors as well as to translate that advantage into global market dominance in many R&D-intensive industries.l3 Meanwhile in less it&D-intensive manufacturing and service industries such as automobiles, steel, machine tools, construction, and financial services, firm technology strategies, to the extent they were articulated at all, tended to be focused on incremental improvements in existing products with an emphasis on product design and marketing.
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From page 16... ...
. Likewise, technical activities beyond basic research, or not directly associated with the specific public missions, have been viewed as the exclusive responsibility of private-sector participants operating within competitive markets; the identification, development, and adoption of commercially useful technology has been left to private companies.is The federal government has, of course, set the climate for these private-sector technical activities through pursuit of growth-oriented macroeconomic policies, the regulation of markets, the guarantee of intellectual property rights, and other critical market-sustaining policy actions.
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From page 17... ...
Clearly, it has.~9 In general the federal government has not considered the development of commercially relevant technologies or commercial technology diffusion a legitimate part of its technology investment portfolio. Notable exceptions are the relatively small-scale industrial technical support (standards, testing, and evaluation)
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From page 18... ...
The strong ideological commitment of American government to the power of free markets and limited government intervention in the nation's economy has for the most part contained congressional attempts to expand the government's role in civilian technology. At the same time, many of those who acknowledge the need to redress gaps in the commercial technology portfolio in principle have been reluctant to take concrete policy actions.
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From page 19... ...
These include private companies, trade and industry associations, universities, private research institutes, community colleges, professional associations, private or private/public consortia, and local, state, and federal government agencies. Moreover, the fact that the nation's science and technology capabilities are dispersed over a large number of regions and political constituencies has greatly increased the importance of constituency politics in federal technology policymaking and implementation.
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science and technology policymaking, in combination with the near total divorce from economic policymaking at the federal level, have greatly impeded collective action on issues and problems that cut across political jurisdictions, and inhibited cooperation in the setting and implementation of national priorities.
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domestic market appeared to be largely immune to foreign competition, and the nation's ability to spawn new products, services, and industries was unrivaled.29 The 1970s and 1980s witnessed growing concern in the United States about the health and performance of the nation's commercial technology enterprise. As major U.S.
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. FFRDCs and many intramural agency laboratories are government-owned, contractor-operated laboratories managed by universities (Los Alamos,
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laboratories that focus primarily on nuclear weapons research are added to those of DOD, the national security mission laboratories account for roughly 55 percent of total federal laboratory expenditures and 60 to 70 percent of total laboratory researchers. At present slightly less than half of all DOE laboratory resources are dedicated to weapons research (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, 1992, pp.
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From page 24... ...
Unlike defense, which has been a purely public mission monopolized by public funding, a natural division of labor developed between the government and industry in other fields such as agricultural and health. In these two fields, government provided funding primarily for the life science aspects where it was difficult to develop appropriable knowledge, while the private sector funded the physical sciences and engineering, where the knowledge has tended to be more appropriable.
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. Somewhat similar considerations would apply to nuclear power where the government provided a great deal of R&D funding and some infrastructure, while the heavily regulated electric utilities financed the development of, and capital investment in, actual power reactors.
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21. It should be noted, however, that all of the uncertainties and risks associated with targeting specific technology areas as worthy of public support have not deterred major trading partners of the United States from doing so, albeit with mixed success.
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From page 27... ...
production data for "high-intensity technology products," as reported to the OECD, with U.S. total shipment data for "high-technology" products as reported to the Department of Commerce according to DOC-3 definition show that the OECD data represented 96 percent and 100 percent of the DOC-3 data in 1980 and 1986, respectively (National Science Board, 1989, pp.
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