Securing America's Industrial Strength (1999) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix B
Appendix B
Pages 99-116
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From page 99... ...
factors that influence innovative activity such as the level of research effort, channels of ~ By national data we mean data on nationwide trends in major sectors of the economy. Generally speaking these include national survey data (e.g., various R&D expenditure surveys, the Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of occupations)
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From page 100... ...
Survey questions on R&D performed and funded by non-A&D business units Survey questions on innovation-related expenses: design, engineering, prototyping, production, and marketing · Number of technical employees, by industry and technology area · Survey of doctoral recipients (matched to company innovation indicators)
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From page 101... ...
innovative activity/capacity · Strategic technology alliance counts · Technical employees · Patents · Patent citations · Customer/user feedback · Informal knowledge flows C Legal and Market Conditions · Intellectual property protection used (patents, secrecy, first mover, etc.)
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From page 102... ...
· Aggregate and regional economic indicators linked to aggregate and regional innovation indicators knowledge l-lows, the means of appropriating innovation results, relevant industry structure and market conditions, and technological opportunities; and (3) the impact of innovation on firms, regions, workers, and the economy as a whole.
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From page 103... ...
The IRI/CIMS survey collects data at the company and business segment levels. R&D expenditures are categorized at the four-digit SIC level, but the survey's response rate is generally too low to be considered representative of any sector of the economy.
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From page 104... ...
Nevertheless, 1988-1991 statistics were revised after being first reported, to reduce the discrepancy. 3 The suggestions of workshop participants for improving R&D included collecting information at the business-unit level of corporate activity rather than for the firm as a whole, adjusting the firm sample to incorporate emerging, high-growth, technology-intensive firms in the service as well as manufacturing sectors, collecting geographic location detail, and taking steps to link R&D with other economic data such as census establishment data.
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From page 105... ...
Decentralization of intrafirm innovative activity may have resulted in greater integration of R&D with corporate strategy and with other business units (product design, marketing, etc.) , but unique technical resources of central corporate laboratories may have been lost in the process.
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From page 106... ...
Industry Distribution of R&D The most striking recent change in industrial R&D effort, in part a function of the change in the National Science Foundation's survey sample, is the sharp increase in the service sector's share of total industry-funded R&D, from 8.4 percent in 1987 to approximately one-quarter in 1995. In all probability, firmlevel rather than business segment reporting in the NSF survey and the SEC filings results in an underestimate of the amount of services, particularly information technology-related R&D, inasmuch as the service functions in many major industrial corporations have expanded.
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From page 107... ...
For example, among the top 50 U.S.-based companies in R&D spending in 1996, all of the companies advancing 10 places or more in the previous 10 years were in these two sectors (see Table B-3~. Orientation of R&D The hypothesis of shortening corporate investment time horizons and greater risk aversion suggests that firms are spending less of their resources on longrange exploratory research and more on incremental improvements in existing products and processes.
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From page 108... ...
Industries shown are the subject of industry performance case studies commissioned by STEP and published in Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy, 1999. Right hand scale refers to nonmanufacturing only; left hand scale applies to all other industries.
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From page 109... ...
Note: Industries shown are the subject of industry performance case studies commissioned by STEP and published in Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy, 1999. Source: National Science Foundation (1999, Table A-22~.
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From page 110... ...
In general, over the 1990s, the R share of industrial R&D is only slightly lower than it was at the end of the 1980s (see Figure Bob. Organization and Character of R&D The CIMS survey data suggest that there has been a shift in the locus of R&D activity both funding and performance to business units away from central organizations, perhaps reflecting shorter time horizons but yielding a closer coupling of R&D to product development.
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From page 111... ...
Finally, spending data are linked to measures of innovative output, patent applications, patents, and share of unit sales attributable to new or improved products. Despite this detail, the severe limitation of the CIMS survey is the low response rate overall, especially to the more detailed questions about innovative outputs.
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From page 112... ...
Industry support of university research, while growing and of increasing importance to the recipient institutions relative to other sources,6 still represents less than 1 percent of total corporate R&D, and that small share remained steady throughout the l990s (see Table Bob. Data on the number of strategic technology alliances, research and development joint ventures, and industry-government laboratory cooperative R&D agreements (CRADAs)
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From page 113... ...
and whether reported arrangements are truly representative of their universes. Location of R&D Activity Industrial innovation has become increasingly multinational through increased direct foreign investment in R&D facilities, development of digital communications, and expanded use of formal international cooperative agreements, joint research ventures, and other forms of strategic technology partnering.
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From page 114... ...
.......... 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 FIGURE B-6 Research and production joint ventures: annual number of new filings under the National Cooperative Research Act (NCRA)
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From page 115... ...
Available national statistics shed little light on this issue. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
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From page 116... ...
On the other hand, the evidence does lead to questions about anecdotal data cited as evidence of the trends. What is certain is that without a concerted effort to improve R&D and other innovation indicators, we will continue to be in a relatively poor position to assess industrial innovation trends.
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