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NIST
GCR 02841
Between Invention and Innovation
An Analysis of Funding for Early-Stage Technology Development
Prepared
for
Economic Assessment Office
Advanced Technology Program
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-4710
By
Lewis M. Branscomb
Aetna Professor of Public Policy
and Corporate Management, emeritus
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
lewis_branscomb@harvard.edu
Philip E. Auerswald
Assistant Director, Science,
Technology, and Public Policy Program
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
philip_auerswald@harvard.edu
Grant
50BNB0C1060
November
2002
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TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Motivation
Objectives
Approach
Findings
- Sources of most
funding
- Inefficiency
of markets
- Institutional
arrangements for funding
- Conditions for
success
- Corporate R&D
spending
Conclusion
- Motivation
- Project Objectives
- Approach
A. Workshops
B. Models for interpreting the data
C. Assumptions and limitations
- Project Outputs
- Team
- The economic nature
and value of technology-based innovations
A. Toward a project-level definition of technology-based innovation
B. Applied research? Seed investment? Defining early stage
- From invention
to innovation
A. Modeling the interval between invention and innovation
B. Three elements of Stage 3
C. Infrastructure requirements and complementary assets
D. Value capture
- Funding institutions
and their roles
A. Corporations
B. Venture Capital
C. Angel Investors
D. Universities
E. State Programs
F. Federal Funding
- Conclusion
- Overview
- Results
- Detailed assumptions
underlying the two models in Table 1
A. Corporations
B. Venture Capital
C. Angel Investors
D. Universities and Colleges
E. State Governments
F. Federal Government
- Introduction
- Trends
R&D Process Evolution: Increasing Complexity and Web-Like Process
Pressure for Measurable Results: Financial Return
Industry and Company Life-Cycle Influences
- Implications
Scale and Scope Changes for R&D
Bias Toward Product Development and Known Markets
- Emergent Responses
Portfolio Management Models
Alliances and Acquisitions and Venture Funds
Spin-Out of R&D Function: ESTD Engines for Hire
- Affymetrix
- Energy
Conversion Devices
- Marlow
Industries
- PolyStor
Corporation
Washington,
D.C. (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace):
January 25, 2001
Panel 1. Early-stage,
technology-based innovation: Overview of data and definitions
Panel 2. Technology focus: Amorphous silicon
Panel 3. Mapping corporate investments
Panel 4. Mapping venture capital and angel investments
Panel 5. Regional distribution of investments and state programs
Panel 6. Technology focus: Life sciences
Panel 7. Mapping federal government investments
Participant Biographies
Palo
Alto, CA (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center):
February 2, 2001
Panel 1. Early-stage,
technology-based innovation: Overview of data
and definitions
Panel 2. Technology cases (I)
Panel 3. Mapping venture capital and angel investments
Panel 4. Institutional innovations: Networks and incubators
Panel 5. Technology cases (II)
Panel 6. University-industry cooperation and regional innovation
Participant
Biographies
Cambridge,
Massachusetts (Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University): May 1 and 2, 2001
Keynote Speaker (May 1) 128
Panel 1. Early-stage,
technology-based innovation: Introduction and presentation of initial
results
Panel 2. Behavioral and institutional issues
Panel 3. Mapping the funding for early-stage innovation: The numbers and
what they might mean
Panel 4. Turning ideas into products: New perspectives on growth through
innovation
Panel 5. Networks, social capital, and concentration by regions and sectors
Panel 6. Public and private complementarities
Participant Biographies
ILLUSTRATIONS
- Figure
1. Estimated distribution of funding sources for early-stage technology
development, based on restrictive and inclusive criteria
- Figure
2. Sequential model of development and funding
- Figure
3. The Valley of Death image
- Figure
4. An alternative metaphor for the invention-to-innovation transition:
the Darwinian Sea
- Figure
5. Typical corporate R&D spending profile
TABLES
- Table
1. Estimates of funding flows to early-stage technology development
(ESTD) from data on financial support for scientific and technological
innovation (1998 data)
- Table
2. Fraction of corporate R&D in central research laboratories,
selected companies, 1998
- Table
3. R&D Spending Profile by Industry
TEXT
BOXES
PROJECT
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Arden
L. Bement
Basil S. Turner Distinguished Professor of Materials Engineering, Purdue
University*
William
Bonvillian
Office of Senator Joseph Lieberman
Christopher
M. Coburn
Executive Director, CCF Innovations, Cleveland Clinic Foundation
Wesley
Cohen
Professor, Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon
University
Maryann
Feldman
The Jeffrey Skoll Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Rotman
School of Management, University of Toronto
Mark
Myers
Xerox Corporation (ret.) and Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
E.
Rogers Novak, Jr.
Founding Partner, Novak Biddle Venture Partners
Rosalie
Ruegg
President and Director of Economic Studies, TIA Consulting
Kenneth
D. Simonson
Senior Economic Advisor, Associated General Contractors of America
Jeffrey
E. Sohl
Director, Center for Venture Research, University of New Hampshire,
Whittemore School of Business and Economics
Charles
W. Wessner
Program Director, Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy, National
Research Council
_____________________
*Position at the time of service on this committee. Dr. Bement is currently
Director
of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Return
to Table of Contents.
ABOUT
THE AUTHORS
Philip
E. Auerswald is Assistant Director of the Science, Technology, and
Public Policy Program and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University. His research pertains to science and technology
policy, the economics of technological innovation, and industrial organization.
Auerswald holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Washington
and a B.A. in Political Science from Yale. With Lewis Branscomb, Auerswald
is the co-author of Taking Technical Risks: How Innovators, Executives
and Investors Manage High Tech Risks (MIT Press, 2001). He is a contributor
to The Emergence of Entrepreneurship Policy: Governance, Start-Ups,
and Growth in the Knowledge Economy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
and the Santa Fe Institute Series in the Sciences of Complexity
(Addison Wesley). He has served as a consultant to the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts Department of Economic Development; in the context
of that work he is principal author of Competitive Imperatives for
the Commonwealth: A conceptual framework to guide the design of state
economic strategy. Additionally, Auerswald has served as a research
consultant to, and reviewer for, the National Research Councils
Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy.
Lewis M. Branscomb
is Aetna Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Management (emeritus)
at Harvard University. He is emeritus director of Harvards Science
Technology and Public Policy Program in the Belfer Center for Science
and International Affairs, and a member of the Centers Board of
Directors. Branscomb received the BA in physics, summa cum laude,
from Duke University in 1945 and PhD in physics from Harvard in 1949,
when he was appointed Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows.
He is a recipient of the Vannevar Bush Award of the National Science Board,
the Arthur Bueche Award of the National Academy of Engineering, the Gold
Medal of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the Okawa Prize in Communications
and Informatics. He received the Centennial Medal of the Harvard University
Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2002. He holds honorary doctoral degrees
from sixteen universities and is an honorary associate of the Engineering
Academy of Japan.
Branscomb pioneered
the study of atomic and molecular negative ions and their role in the
atmospheres of the earth and stars and was a co-founder of the Joint Institute
for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) at the University of Colorado. While
there, he was Editor of the Reviews of Modern Physics. After serving
as director of the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (now the National
Institute of Standards and Technology) from 1969 to 1972, he was named
vice president and chief scientist of IBM Corporation and a member of
the IBM Corporate Management Board. In 1980 President Carter appointed
him to the National Science Board and was elected chairman in the same
year, serving until May 1984.
Branscomb was appointed
by President Johnson to the Presidents Science Advisory Committee
(1964-1968) and by President Reagan to the National Productivity Advisory
Committee. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the
National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the National
Academy of Public Administration. He is a director of the AAAS and a director
of the National Research Council. He is a former president of the American
Physical Society and a former president of Sigma Xi.
Branscomb is the co-chair,
with Richard Klausner, of the Academies study entitled Making
the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism,
released on June 25, 2002 and published by National Academy Press on August
2, 2002. He has written extensively on information technology, comparative
science and technology policy, and management of innovation and technology.
In addition to more than 450 published papers, his recent books are Taking
Technical Risks: How Innovators, Executives, and Investors Manage High
Tech Risk, (with Philip Auerswald, 2000); Industrializing Knowledge:
University-Industry Linkages in Japan and the United States (edited
with Fumio Kodama and Richard Florida, 1999); Investing in Innovation:
A Research and Innovation Policy that Works (edited with James Keller,
1998); Korea at the Turning Point: Innovation-Based Strategies for
Development (with H.Y. Choi, 1996); Japanese Innovation Strategy:
Technical Support for Business Visions (with Fumio Kodama, 1993);
Empowering Technology: Implementing a U.S. Policy (1993); Converging
Infrastructures: Intelligent Transportation and the National Information
Infrastructure (with James Keller, 1996); Informed Legislatures:
Coping with Science in a Democracy (with Megan Jones and David Guston,
1996); Confessions of a Technophile (1994); and Beyond Spinoff:
Military and Commercial Technologies in a Changing World, (with J.
Alic, et.al., 1992).
Return to Table
of Contents.
ABSTRACT
The purpose
of the Between Invention and Innovation project is to support informed
design of public policies regarding technology entrepreneurship and the
transition from invention to innovation by providing a better understanding
of the sources of investments into early-stage technology development
projects. National investment into the conversion of inventions into radically
new goods and services, although small in absolute terms when compared
to total industrial R&D, significantly affects long-term economic
growth by converting the nations portfolio of science and engineering
knowledge into innovations generating new markets and industries. Understanding
early-stage technology development is important because a national and
global capacity to sustain long-term economic growth is important.
The project
has sought to answer two sets of questions:
- What is the distribution
of funding for early-stage technology development across different institutional
categories? How do government programs compare with private sources
in terms of magnitude?
- What kinds of difficulties
do firms face when attempting to find funding for early-stage, high-risk
R&D projects? To what extent are such difficulties due to structural
barriers or market failures?
We have
pursued two approaches in parallel to arrive at a reasonable estimate
of the national investment in early-stage technology development: first,
learning from the observations of practitioners in the context of a series
of workshops held in the U.S., and second, collecting the data available
on early-stage technology development investments from other studies and
from public statistical sources. These approaches have been supplemented
by four case studies conducted by a team of Harvard researchers and a
set of forty-six in-depth interviews of corporate technology managers,
CEOs, and venture capitalists conducted on our behalf and with our direction
by Booz Allen & Hamilton.
We found
that most funding for technology development in the phase between invention
and innovation comes from individual private-equity angel
investors, corporations, and the federal government-not venture capitalists.
Our findings support the view that markets for allocating risk capital
to early-stage technology ventures are not efficient. Despite (or in response
to) market inefficiencies, many institutional arrangements have developed
for funding early-stage technology development. This suggests that funding
mechanisms evolve to match the incentives and motivations of entrepreneurs
and investors alike.
We also
found that the conditions for success in science-based, high-tech innovation
are strongly concentrated in a few geographical regions and industrial
sectors, indicating the importance in this process of innovator-investor
proximity and networks of supporting people and institutions. Among corporations,
the fraction of R&D spending that is dedicated to early-stage technology
development varies both among firms and within industries. The latter
variation may be related to industry life cycles. Overall, we found that
the federal role in early-stage technology development is far more significant
than would be suggested by an uncritical glance at aggregate R&D statistics.
Federal technology development funds complement, rather than substitute
for, private funds. Decisions made today regarding the nature and magnitude
of federal support for early-stage technology development are likely to
have an impact far into the future.
Return
to Table of Contents.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are
particularly grateful to the members of the advisory committee, as listed
at the opening of this report, and to participants in the three Between
Invention and Innovation workshops, as listed in Annex III. The collective
observations and perspectives of these individuals comprise the most valuable
content in this report. We owe special thanks to Ronald Cooper, Paul Reynolds,
Hans Severiens, and Jeffrey Sohl for consultations regarding the difficult
task of estimating investments by angel investors into early-stage
technology development. We additionally thank Cooper for providing us
with unpublished data relevant to our study. Ambuj Sagar contributed to
the report via numerous discussions throughout the process as well as
through the writing of the brief company narratives presented in Annex
II. Teresa Lawson of Lawson Associates Editorial Consulting ably edited
the entire report (including company narratives) and the separately published
case studies. Stephen Feinson assisted with workshop organization and
project administration.
We would
also like to thank Darin Boville, the original contracting officer, formerly
of the Advanced Technology Program, for his insights and guidance at the
initial stages of the project. Connie Chang, Senior Economist at ATP and
the contracting officer for the project, ably managed the work to its
conclusion. We benefited from additional comments by reviewers at ATP,
including Anya Frieman (Economist), John Hewes (Information Coordinator),
Omid Omidvar (Program Manager), and Stephanie Shipp (Director of the Economic
Assessment Office.)
Date created: February
14, 2003
Last updated:
March 3, 2003
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