Collaborative Research: Models and Analyses of Industrial Laboratories: Returns, Risks, and Structural Efficiency, with Implications for Sustainability and Science Policy

在过去的世纪中，以贝尔实验室、杜邦研究所、IBM研究所和施乐帕洛阿尔托研究中心为代表的工业实验室为科学知识和技术创新作出了持久的贡献，造福了社会、我国的经济和公民的生活。工业实验室是反馈回路的组成部分，将它们与工程和商业实践相结合，结果是实验室的研究人员从一个方向的新问题和挑战中受益，而解决方案，原型和产品则向相反的方向流动。这种环境定义了使用启发的研究，补充？开放科学？在学术机构进行的研究。 虽然最近的经验可能会引起人们对工业研究实验室在当前高度竞争的市场环境中的生存能力的怀疑，但也有令人鼓舞的迹象：经历过重大衰退的实验室现在正专注于振兴自己，而新的参与者已经到来，并正在开创新的工业研究模式。 因此，现在是时候深入和广泛地研究科学和创新政策如何能够促进一种环境，使工业实验室能够继续产生具有广泛科学价值和变革性技术影响的发现和发明。本研究课题以“工程学”为基础，运用分析模型和定量方法，对产业实验室的运营、融资和成长的基本特征进行系统的剖析和分析，通过改变政策投入并考察其影响的逻辑实验，得出结论，从而加深对产业实验室运营的理解。 特别是，研究将集中在三个领域：1）开发和解决一个优化问题，以确定工业研究投资的理论回报率，可用于确定优化实验室管理的原则，并对实验室的可行性进行条件评估; 2）分析融资工业实验室的投资风险，研究投资与经营决策的相互作用，确定投资战略，为从事基础研究的实验室提供急需的长期稳定性;以及3）确定实验室管理结构如何影响激励，操作规模，通过对传统的一体化序列结构和新兴的产业研究管理结构进行比较研究， 更广泛的影响该项目将提供新的见解，帮助工业实验室通过创建实验室管理人员所需的工具来改进和改造自己，以采用更好的组织结构，管理实验室投资的财务风险，并最大限度地提高回报率。该项目将使决策者了解科学政策和其他类型政策的影响，金融监管，对实验室的投资和业务。最后，虽然分析是在实验室层面进行的，但传统的垂直一体化结构和新兴结构之间的比较的见解和结果将从工业实验室转移到国家创新生态系统的讨论中，特别是在协调成本，激励措施的重点，进行基础研究的能力和投资机制方面的权衡。

During the past century, industrial laboratories, as exemplified by Bell Labs, DuPont Research, IBM Research and Xerox PARC, have made lasting contributions to scientific knowledge and technological innovations, which have benefited society, our nation's economy and the lives of its citizens. Industrial laboratories are integral to a feedback loop that couples them with engineering and business practices, with the result that researchers in the laboratories benefit from streams of new questions and challenges from the field in one direction, while solutions, prototypes and products flow in the opposite direction. This environment defines use-inspired research that complements ?open science? research performed in academic institutions. While recent experience may justifiably raise doubts on the survivability of industrial research laboratories in the current highly-competitive market environment, there are also encouraging signs: laboratories that experienced major declines are now focusing on revitalizing themselves, while newer players have arrived and are pioneering new models of industrial research. It is therefore timely to take a deep and broad look at how science and innovation policies can foster an environment in which industrial laboratories will continue to produce discoveries and inventions with broad scientific value and transformative technological impact. Intellectual MeritThis project will develop our understanding of the operation of industrial laboratories by taking an "engineering-oriented" approach that employs analytical models and quantitative methods to systematically dissect and analyze the essential features of operation, financing, and growth of industrial laboratories and draw conclusions by carrying out logic experiments that vary policy inputs and examine their impact. In particular, the research will concentrate on three areas: 1) develop and solve an optimization problem to determine the theoretical rate of return of the investment in industrial research that can be used to identify principles for optimizing laboratory management and make conditional assessments regarding the viability of the laboratories; 2) analyze the investment risk of financing industrial laboratories, study the interaction between investment and operational decisions, and identify investment strategies that provide much-needed long-term stability for laboratories to engage in fundamental research; and 3) determine how laboratory management structure affects incentive, scale of operations, and research outputs by conducting comparative studies between the traditional integrated sequential structure and newly emerging structures of industrial research management. Broader ImpactsThe project will provide new insights that will help industrial laboratories to improve and re-invent themselves by creating the tools laboratory managers require to adopt better organizational structures, manage the financial risk of investing in the laboratory, and maximize the rate of return. The project will inform policymakers about the impact of Science policy, and other types of policy, e.g., financial regulation, on laboratory investments and operations. Finally, while the analysis is carried out at the level of laboratories, the insights and results from comparisons between the traditional vertically-integrated structure and newly emerging structures will carry-over from industrial laboratories to the discussion on the national innovation ecosystem, especially in relation to the trade-offs in coordination cost, focus of incentives, ability to conduct fundamental research, and investment mechanisms.