Collaborative Research: Science Policy Research Report: Government Brokerage of Innovation Networks

联邦机构至少为美国的创新者提供两种不同的支持来源：第一，种子资金和咨询服务，这些都是早期创业者在竞争激烈的市场价格下几乎无法获得的；第二，介绍合作网络中的潜在合作伙伴。鉴于创新既需要合作也需要竞争，后者的贡献与前者一样重要。但它们显然不那么为人所知和理解。部分原因是联邦政府建立协作网络的努力往往发生在过程的早期，在创新进入市场并抓住公众的想象力之前；部分原因还在于它们是非正式的，公职人员有弱化其非正式贡献的动机，而强调他们的正式角色，比如为小企业和初创企业提供低成本的融资和咨询服务。这些贡献往往得不到他们所在机构的衡量和奖励。然而，这种监管的意外后果是，联邦政府建立创新网络的努力很难记录和复制。通过评估联邦政府在网络建设中的作用的程度和重要性，本研究报告考虑了新的授权、指标和激励措施的发展，这些措施将鼓励公职人员的有益中介、私营同行的创新和整个国家的繁荣。该报告对两种类型的经纪人进行了区分：中间人，他们在不相关的各方之间转移货物或服务，因此依赖费用；以及催化剂，他们在不相关的各方之间免费建立互利关系，因此依赖于外部（例如政府）支持。它通过对国家科学基金会、国家卫生研究院、国家制造创新网络、国家标准与技术研究院、国防高级研究计划局和小企业创新研究计划等机构的系统比较，来衡量催化剂经纪在联邦创新机构中的程度和重要性。它还提供了旨在促进催化剂经纪的政策建议，这些建议是有价值的，而且成本低（或没有），包括对联邦机构和项目的人员配置、规划和评估进行调整。

Federal agencies offer American innovators at least two different sources of support: first, seed money and consulting services that would be all but inaccessible to early stage entrepreneurs at competitive market prices; and second, introductions to potential partners in collaborative networks. Given that innovation demands collaboration as well as competition, the latter contributions are no less important than the former. But they are decidedly less well known and understood. This is partly because federal efforts to build collaborative networks tend to occur early in the process, before innovations come to market and capture the public's imagination; and partly because they are informal, and public officials have an incentive to downplay their informal contributions, which tend to go unmeasured and unrewarded by their agencies, and highlight their formal roles, like offering small firms and start-ups low-cost finance and consulting services. The unintended consequence of this oversight, however, is that federal efforts to build innovation networks are hard to document and duplicate. By evaluating the extent and importance of the federal government's role in network-building, this research report considers the development of new mandates, metrics, and incentives that will encourage beneficial brokerage by public officials, innovation by their private counterparts, and prosperity in the country as a whole. The report draws a distinction between two types of brokers: middlemen, who are paid to transfer goods or services between unrelated parties and thus depend on fees; and catalysts, who build mutually beneficial relationships between unrelated parties free of charge and thus depend on external (e.g., government) support. It gauges the extent and importance of catalyst brokerage in federal innovation institutions by means of a systematic comparison of the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Small Business Innovation Research program, among others. And if offers policy recommendations designed to foster catalyst brokerage, where valuable, at low (or no) cost--including changes to the staffing, programming, and evaluation of federal agencies and programs.