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、杜邦研究中心、IBM研究中心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做出了持久的贡献，这使社会、我国的经济和公民的生活受益。工业实验室是与工程和商业实践相结合的反馈回路中不可或缺的一部分，其结果是，实验室中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。这种环境定义了以使用为灵感的研究，以补充？打开科学吗?在学术机构进行的研究。虽然最近的经验可能有理由让人怀疑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，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，并开创了工业研究的新模式。因此，深入而广泛地审视科学和创新政策如何能够营造一种环境，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，这是及时的。本项目将采用“工程导向”的方法，采用分析模型和定量方法，系统剖析和分析工业实验室运营、融资和发展的基本特征，并通过开展不同政策投入的逻辑实验得出结论，并检查其影响，从而加深我们对工业实验室运营的理解。具体而言，研究将集中在三个方面：1)开发并解决一个优化问题，以确定工业研究投资的理论回报率，该问题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有条件的评估；2)分析工业实验室融资的投资风险，研究投资与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长期稳定性的投资策略；3)通过对传统的一体化序贯结构和新兴的产业科研管理结构的比较研究，确定实验室管理结构对激励、经营规模和科研产出的影响。更广泛的影响该项目将提供新的见解，通过创建实验室管理人员需要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的工具，帮助工业实验室改进和重新发明自己。该项目将使决策者了解科学政策以及其他类型的政策（如金融监管）对实验室投资和运营的影响。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与新兴结构比较的见解和结果将从工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、基础研究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.