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

在过去的一个世纪里，以贝尔实验室、杜邦研究公司、IBM研究公司和施乐公司为代表的工业实验室为科学知识和技术创新做出了持久的贡献，造福了社会、我国的经济和公民的生活。工业实验室是将它们与工程和商业实践相结合的反馈环路的组成部分，其结果是，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、原型和产品则朝着相反的方向流动。这种环境定义了受使用启发的研究，它补充了开放科学？在学术机构进行的研究。虽然最近的经验可能会让人有理由怀疑工业研究实验室在当前竞争激烈的市场环境中的生存能力，但也有令人鼓舞的迹象：经历了大幅下滑的实验室现在正专注于重振自己，而新的参与者已经到来，正在开创工业研究的新模式。因此，现在是时候深入和广泛地研究科学和创新政策如何创造一种环境，使工业实验室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。智力价值这个项目将通过采用以工程为导向的方法，采用分析模型和定量方法，系统地剖析和分析工业实验室运行、融资和增长的基本特征，并通过进行不同政策投入和检验其影响的逻辑实验得出结论，从而加深我们对工业实验室运行的理解。特别是，这项研究将集中在三个方面：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，用于确定优化实验室管理的原则，并对实验室的生存能力进行条件评估；2)分析资助工业实验室的投资风险，研究投资和运营决策之间的相互作用，确定为实验室从事基础研究提供急需的长期稳定的投资策略；以及3)通过对传统的综合顺序结构和新兴的工业研究管理结构进行比较研究，确定实验室管理结构如何影响激励、运营规模和研究产出。更广泛的影响该项目将提供新的见解，通过创建实验室经理采用更好的组织结构、管理实验室投资的财务风险和最大化回报率所需的工具，帮助工业实验室改进和重新发明自己。该项目将向政策制定者通报科学政策以及其他类型的政策对实验室投资和运营的影响，例如金融监管。最后，虽然分析是在实验室层面进行的，但传统垂直一体化结构和新兴结构的比较得出的见解和结果将从产业实验室延续到国家创新生态系统的讨论中，特别是在协调成本、激励重点、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.