America`s 726 federal laboratories, many of which have spent the last 45 years developing the nation`s Cold War arsenal, are themselves underutilized weapons in a new war for global competitiveness, according to a new report issued by the Council on Competitiveness.
As old customers, such as the Pentagon, military contractors and the intelligence community pull back because of cuts in the defense budget, the federal labs need to refocus their activities and develop customer-driven technology-transfer programs for U.S. industry, said the report from the private, non-partisan Washington-based council.
In many ways, the report continued, the nation`s federal laboratories are a microcosm of the broader competitiveness challenges facing the United States. They are geared more to the Cold War era that is behind us than to the era of intense international economic competition in which American business and industry find themselves.
”These laboratories need a new mission,” said Erich Bloch, the former National Science Foundation director who directed the council report. ”Their likely customers for the foreseeable future will not be the military, but more and more the civilian sector.”
According to Bloch, federal laboratories such as the Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Lemont or Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., are well-positioned to address generic issues and technologies critical to the competitiveness of American industry such as manufacturing processes, creation of new materials, superconductivity, information technology and biotechnology.
”These multidisciplinary areas are well-represented in the capabilities of the government laboratories,” said Bloch. ”In addition to their human resources, the laboratories have a superb array of expensive facilities, equipment and instruments that could be more intensively utilized by and for the private sector.”
The problem is that few of the federal labs, which have a collective annual budget of some $22 billion, are set up to serve private industry-financially or philosophically.
Too many labs, the report said, tend to view issues related to industrial technology and competitiveness as peripheral concerns rather than as part of their core missions. Too many administrators and researchers feel threatened by this new role.
Only a small fraction of the federal labs` resources go toward technology-transfer agreements with private industry because, in the case of Department of Energy laboratories such as Argonne, they do not have the legal authority to redirect existing funds to those activities. Government bureaucracy still impedes efforts to negotiate, sign and implement technology- transfer ventures in a speedy fashion.
Another obstacle, the council report said, is that most of the federal labs are technology-driven and concentrate on developing enabling technologies that open the door for new capabilities. They are concerned primarily with long-term responses to problems.
Private industry, on the other hand, is market-driven. It concentrates on developing technologies with very specific product applications and generally looks for short-term responses to problems.
”There is a cultural, philosophical gap between private industry and the federal labs,” said Phillip Francis, vice president for technology at the Square D Co. in suburban Palatine.
”Few American industries have actually worked with the federal labs. These labs are not oriented toward consistent-volume kinds of products; their focus is long-term, high risk.
”But with the changes occurring in American industry . . . with more and more companies getting rid of separate (research and development) centers as they shift their focus and money on manufacturing, the federal labs will come to play a more important role,” said Francis, who serves on the council`s advisory committee for federal laboratories.
True working partnerships need to be developed between government and industry, he added.
”The problem American industries are facing is `where do I go` for technical expertise as they shut down their own R&D centers,” said Francis.
”What American industry has to understand is that the federal labs are not Wal-Marts of technology where you go down the aisle and identify technologies you need. What they can offer is technology transfer.”
Technology transfer between the federal labs and private industry became a priority in the early and mid-1980s as the competitiveness issue caught fire.
According to the council report, technology transfer generally consists of three forms as mandated by a string of executive orders and legislation: 1. sharing technology developed to satisfy the needs of the lab`s parent agency, such as the Department of Energy or Defense, but which also has relevance to commercial industry; 2. allowing industry to use lab facilities and testing equipment and to hire lab technical experts as consultants; and 3. having the labs and commercial industry jointly develop technology that meets industry-driven needs.
Laws enabling that kind of technology transfer were reinforced by the establishment of technology-transfer centers at many of the labs as well as a proliferation of some 800 cooperative research-and-develop ment agreements
(known as CRADAs) between the labs and private industry authorized by the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986.
However, while there have been some successes, progress has been slow and insufficient to meet the new technology challenges facing the nation, said the council report.
”CRADAs may have been signed and projects launched, but, so far, very little technology that industry can actually incorporate into commercial products has been forthcoming,” the report said.
Currently, however, there is an unprecedented overlap between the labs`
technical capabilities and industry`s needs-a window of opportunity opened by the end of the Cold War and a de-emphasis of weapons development.
An informal poll conducted by the council found that the top four categories of private industry`s needs were: 1. advanced materials and processing; 2. advanced computing; 3. environmental technologies and; 4. manufacturing processes, testing and equipment. Other critical technologies included new power sources, sensors, photonics and optoelectronics.
The poll showed that all of those areas were listed as unique strengths by the federal labs.
Secretary of Energy James Watkins says that while the criticisms of the federal labs contained in the council`s report are legitimate, Energy Department lawyers have worked out a new ”umbrella agreement” designed to streamline the linkup between the labs and private industry.
The agreement means that an individual company no longer has to waste valuable time and resources negotiating from scratch when it wants to work with researchers at a federal lab like Argonne.
”Private industry can now come in, say, `This is the work we want to do,` and we say, `Here`s the umbrella agreement,` and then `Let`s do it,`
” said Watkins. ”It`s a new policy. If you have to go through 9 to 12 months of negotiations before you get started, that`s just too long. Especially in the computer industry, where their new-product cycle time is less than six months.”
The new policy at federal labs under Energy Department jurisdiction is to open the doors, Watkins said. ”We invite any company to look over our fence to find technology, to do their own R&D and turn it into products,” he added. Even though the doors of federal labs are open, it would be naive to think these institutions are going to solve America`s competitiveness problem, said Alan Schriesheim, director and chief executive of Argonne National Laboratory near Lemont.
”Helping American industry in its struggle for global competitiveness is just one leaf in our portfolio,” said Schriesheim. ”The federal laboratories are balancing a wide range of problems. We have developed institutions to solve problems that require science and technology. We have to be careful because we have a whole set of those problems that we are working on-toxic waste, acid rain, critical technologies, advanced nuclear reactors. All of these are important. Private industry won`t tackle them because there is no return for stockholders. Universities won`t because they require a
multidisciplinary infrastructure which they don`t have.
”All of these are issues we are in the process of balancing,” said Schriesheim, ”then along comes the global competitiveness issue. We have come to some kind of consensus in this country that in order to be globally competitive, the federal labs have a major role to play. So now we have another mission . . . that there are certain global competitiveness issues that our institutions can play a role in fixing.”
Harvey Drucker, associate director for energy, environmental and biological research at Argonne, points out that technology transfer between federal labs and private industry is not the only answer to developing new products and processes.
”If you are a private company and you come and say to us, `I want to develop a new motor utilizing superconductivity, we will work with you if we have the funding and if you have the patience needed to develop something like that,” said Drucker. ”But if you come and say, `Drop everything, we want this product in two years,` we just can`t do that. We can`t depart from research programs that are mandated by the DOE.”
Since 1990 Argonne has reached 14 fully approved research agreements with private industry-including giants such as Caterpillar, Baxter International, Allied Signal and Commonwealth Edison-and has 30 more in negotiation.
