Capitalizing on Investments in Science and Technology (1999) / Chapter Skim
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3 Adapting to New Challenges
3 Adapting to New Challenges
Pages 34-44
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From page 34... ...
Investors demand quarterly profit growth, and the marketplace demands shorter product cycles. Both industry and government seek to cut spending and balance budgets.
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From page 35... ...
The large pharmaceutical companies rely on more agile biotechnology companies for new ideas, and few of the fastest-growing computer hardware or software companies founded in recent years support centralized research facilities.3 Although it would be a mistake to overestimate the scale of long-term basic research that industry performed in the past, this work has produced many iSee www.ngi.gov for an overview of NGI. 2In an area such as networking, where existing strong products and standards such as TCP/IP exist and are difficult to displace, private firms may be reluctant to fund research on radical new approaches.
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From page 36... ...
Virtually all R&D is tied to specific product goals, including incremental improvements. To supplement internal R&D, the Big Three automakers rely more on suppliers, cooperating with each other through the United States Council for Automotive Research consortium, and increasing interactions with the government, especially DoE, through the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles.
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One example is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which provided over $400 million in 1997 for medical research, grants, and special programs (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 1997~. Still, ongoing changes will complicate the task of ensuring that the public and private sectors provide sufficient funding for a diverse national portfolio of science and engineering research.
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(moderator) ' David Farber' University of Pennsylvania' Deborah Estrin' University of Southern California' and Brian Reid' Digital Equipment Corp.
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From page 39... ...
the networking industry with the telephone industry how to design optical network systems, how to link embeciclec} processors, and, in general, how to cope with the explosive growth of the industry. Some of these problems require not only engineering experience, but also varying levels of expertise in marketing, consensus building political science, ant} urban planning; the installation ant!
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eSeveral experts who have attempted to secure funding for new centers or programs in bioinformatics reported experiencing difficulties in the peer review process' which they believe partly reflected an inability for some reviewers to consider the context beyond their own disciplines. 40 Capitalizing on Investments in Science and Technology
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At the same time, the traditional boundaries of a discipline may present a challenge to students who want to investigate emerging fields. To arrange a program in bioinformatics, for example, a student may have to take computer science courses in the school of engineering, mathematics courses in the school of arts and sciences, and biology courses in the life sciences department and the medical school.
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system; not every institution needs to emulate Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Stanford. The benefits of breaking down institutional barriers can be seen in the highperforming industry networks: Silicon Valley; Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; the Route 128 complex outside Boston; the textile firms of northern Italy; and the industrial centers of Japan.
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From page 43... ...
The corporations with their functional specialization have given way to smaller, leaner organizations in which team-based structures cross functional lines, transcend hierarchical chains of command, and focus on core functions while contracting with outside firms for other tasks. For example, DuPont has Adapting to New Challenges 43
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From page 44... ...
A role for the limited-partnership venture capital firm emerged in the late 1960s, enabled by a favorable economy, stock market, and tax policy. A key reform came in 1979, when the Department of Labor changed the "prudent man rule" to allow pension funds to invest in venture capital funds.
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