NIST GCR 02–841
Between Invention and Innovation
An Analysis of Funding for Early-Stage Technology Development

• Federal funds are among the largest sources of financing for ESTD, with an estimated range between $1.4 and $7.3 billion depending on assumptions made. Even the low model assumptions of federal ESTD funds, counting only ATP and SBIR, which are targeted specifically on the invention-to-innovation transition, make up an important portion of such federal funds and of the total flows of ESTD investments.
  
• Although the science-based innovation expenditures of larger high-tech companies are only on the order of 10–15 percent of total corporate R&D expenditures, they nonetheless represent a major source of ESTD funding. Increasingly important modes of corporate support include outlays from corporate venture funds, and partnerships between large and small firms enabling small firms’ access to emergent technologies and to providing an outlet for excubating inventions the large firm does not wish to commercialize internally because they fall outside the firm’s core activities.
  
• Venture capital investment in ESTD varies dramatically by stage of funding and industry. The low estimates depend on treating seed venture capital as a lower boundary to ESTD from venture firms; the higher estimates depend on how much of subsequent stages of venture funding represent R&D aimed at preparing new products for market entry. In either case it is clearly a less significant source of funding than that provided by angel investors, or by corporate and federal sources.

3. DETAILED ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING THE TWO MODELS IN TABLE 1

A. CORPORATIONS

In 1998, corporations reported to NSF investments in R&D totaling $149.7 billion. They indicated (perhaps somewhat arbitrarily) allocation of $11.3 billion to basic research, $33.6 billion to applied research, and $104.7 billion to development.⁽⁶⁹⁾ These massive investments are highly concentrated; the top 500 firms accounted for nearly 90 percent of all corporate R&D expenditures.⁽⁷⁰⁾ Most firms in the highly competitive technology sector invest heavily in R&D to compete, and while they frequently achieve important breakthroughs, the overwhelming majority of corporate research investments pertain to the core business. While some of these core business innovations may represent radical advances in the sense that they are based upon fundamentally new technologies, most are unlikely to be the sort of disruptive innovations that destabilize markets, create new opportunities for learning, and open up entirely new spheres of economic activity, which is the intent of government programs like ATP.⁽⁷¹⁾ Consequently, our analysis sought to focus on corporate investment in early-stage technology development outside of a corporation’s core business.

(i) Lower estimate: Early-stage innovation research funding in central research laboratories

Central corporate research laboratories are a primary locus for pre-commercial ESTD research at many large corporations. In contrast, business-segment laboratories tend to focus almost exclusively on extensions of existing products in their core business. Researchers in central corporate labs are relatively free from intense pressures by business managers to maximize profits and the imposition of cultural norms that promote loyalty to existing product lines that exist in business-segment laboratories. Thus, researchers in central corporate labs have more latitude to engage in new areas of research and push the development of innovations that might not survive in business-segment laboratories. Such motivations were driving factors in the establishment and success of famous central laboratories such as AT&T Bell Laboratories, Xerox PARC, and IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center.

NIST economist Gregory Tassey reports that for a small sample of corporations with large R&D program budgets, approximately 9.4 percent of reported R&D is carried out in central research labs (see Table 2).⁽⁷²⁾ Since only the largest and most R&D-intensive firms have the resources to maintain prominent central research labs, we presume that such labs are found primarily in those firms with R&D programs larger than $100 million. These would include the approximately 200 top R&D-performing firms, which spent $112.7 billion on R&D in 1998, about two-thirds of total industry expenditures.⁽⁷³⁾ Using Tassey’s reported average, we estimate that, in the top 200 R&D-performing firms, total central research lab expenditures are approximately $11 billion (~9.4 percent of $112.7 billion).

Based on his experience at IBM and other observations, Lewis Branscomb, the co-author of this report, conjectures that within the large central labs, ESTD work comprises perhaps 15 percent of the research. This figure is not inconsistent with estimates produced by the Industrial Research Institute that 6 percent of R&D funds in central labs are directed toward basic research and 36 percent toward applied research, since ESTD work is likely to be categorized by corporations as both basic and applied research.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Therefore, we assume that 15 percent of R&D in central research labs, or $1.7 billion (15 percent of the $11 billion figure derived in the paragraph above), is spent on ESTD research, and without including any other in-house corporate R&D expenditures, use this as a lower-range estimate for industry funding of ESTD work.

(ii) Upper estimate: Portions of industry funded basic and applied research

Investments by industry into basic research are often more targeted and constrained than in the academic laboratories where the majority of the nation’s basic research takes place.⁽⁷⁵⁾ Within the corporate context, a deliberately composed research staff (with specifically chosen skills and interests) and constant market pressures tend to drive basic research to focus on areas of practical relevance to the firm. As a first approximation, some significant portion of these corporate basic research flows may provide an estimate of research into non-core businesses, since most research in the core would generally be characterized as applied research. In 1998, industry expenditures on basic research totaled $11.3 billion.⁽⁷⁶⁾ Reported basic research expenditures probably include both the science research that results in new laboratory ideas and builds links to university research, as well as the funds to transform the concept into the kind of viable commercial proposal required for a product division to accept the project into its business plan. We arbitrarily allocate one-half of these basic research funds, or $5.6 billion, to ESTD investments.

Some corporate applied research funds may also flow to ESTD projects. The majority of these applied research investments focus on core business areas, working to extend existing product and service lines rather than to encourage new breakthrough innovations of the sort we focus on here. Moreover, survey-based estimates of applied research expenditures typically include new research in areas with potential applications as well as the application of existing knowledge to the solution of practical problems. We attribute a third of these applied research funds, or $11.2 billion, to ESTD work, while acknowledging that this assumption probably overstates the true funding levels by a significant margin. Combining these totals, our model for an upper-range estimate for corporate funding of ESTD research is $16.8 billion.

One source of information that suggests that the upper-range estimate may be closer to reality comes from a study commissioned by this project by Booz Allen & Hamilton (see Annex I). Interviews were conducted with corporate executives from companies selected at random, representing the software, telecommunications, electronic component manufacturing, automotive manufacturing, and biotechnology industries to assess spending trends and research activities in ESTD. The BAH study concluded that:

• industries focused on quickly developing technologies such as biotechnology and computer hardware spent a higher proportion of their R&D on ESTD than did industries based on more established technologies;
  
• product-based technology companies tended to spend more of their resources on ESTD work early in the company’s life cycle than they did later;
  
• mature product-based companies tended to focus more of their investments on product development rather than on new ESTD projects.
  

B. VENTURE CAPITAL

Venture capital disbursements cover a broad swath of industries and stages of company development. Venture Economics reports that in 1998 a total of $16.8 billion was disbursed mostly to small, innovative firms.⁽⁷⁷⁾

As a rule, venture capital firms specialize in acquiring promising technology firms, not in building such firms from scratch. While venture capital firms support nascent ventures through mechanisms other than investments categorized as seed stage (such as bridge loans),⁽⁷⁸⁾ only a fraction of venture capital funding at all stages of company advancement directly supports the development of new technology (as distinct from other activities of new firms such as management, production, and marketing).

To be able to distinguish what portion of venture capital disbursements fund ESTD work, venture capital disbursement data have to be broken down by activity, something not readily feasible with current broad-based surveys of venture capital firms. A simple model of the percentage of venture capital that is directed toward ESTD can be calculated by making assumptions based on the stage of funding being pursued by the company. Essentially, the earlier in development a company is, the more venture funding will go towards R&D activities. Seed-stage financing occurs very early in the life cycle of a new venture and usually involves a small amount of capital provided to an inventor or entrepreneur working in an area of great promise to reduce the technical idea to practice and identify the market that might be created.

We further focus our analysis by counting only efforts in product-based technology industries, where technical breakthroughs can lead to discontinuous innovations in a manner that only seldom occurs in service-based industries. Startup efforts that hinge upon technical extensions of current technologies or new business models built around pre-existing products and services are therefore excluded.

(i) Lower estimate: Seed-stage venture capital disbursements

In 1998, seed-stage deals made up $0.72 billion, or only 4.3 percent of total venture capital disbursements. Approximately 60 percent of seed-stage disbursements, or $0.44 billion, were directed toward firms in product-based technology industries in 1998. All such disbursements are estimated to be directed toward ESTD work.

(ii) Upper estimate: Components of all venture capital disbursements for product-based technology firms

About half of the $16.8 billion in venture capital funding awarded in 1998 went to firms in product-based technology industries, where ESTD work is most likely to occur. At the seed stage, about 60 percent of venture capital funds went to entrepreneurs in product-based technology industries. All $0.44 billion of seed-stage funds are estimated to fund ESTD activities. At the startup financing phase, about one-half of the $0.97 billion invested are for firms in product-based technology industries. These funds are normally provided for use in product development and initial marketing. We assume that one-half of startup financing is for ESTD research, with the remainder focused on other business development activities, providing an estimate for ESTD of one-quarter of startup-stage funding, or $0.24 billion at the startup stage.

First-stage and other subsequent early-stage disbursements are provided to support commercial manufacturing and sales, and made up about $3 billion in investments in 1998. Only a small portion of companies will be investing funds acquired at this stage into significant new technology-based research. We estimate that half of first-stage funds are invested in product-based technology firms and that just 10 percent of these disbursements, or $0.15 billion, fund ESTD work.

Based upon these speculations, we project that as much as $0.83 billion of venture capital might have directed toward support of ESTD in 1998.

C. ANGEL INVESTORS

The level of investment provided by private individuals is very difficult to track. Most angel deals are private, individually small in size, and do not readily show up in major statistical reports. Jeff Sohl of the University of New Hampshire says that, in this country, “conservative estimates suggest that about 250,000 angels invest approximately $10–20 billion every year in over 30,000 ventures,” for an average deal size of about $330,000 to $660,000 per venture (Washington, D.C. workshop). Most angel deals occur very early in the life cycle of a startup and typically provide funding for a single project team—sometimes a single individual—focused on a single project.

(i) Lower estimate: Angel disbursements based on Silicon Valley data

Luis Villalobos of Tech Coast Angels estimates that its investments break down as “60 percent high-tech, 30 percent dot-com, and 10 percent services.” Band of Angels founder Hans Severiens states that from 1995 through the end of 2000, the Band of Angels invested collectively a total of $83 million in 132 companies, for an average deal size of about $625,000. Severiens further estimates that angel activities in the Silicon Valley area are likely to be around $200 to $300 million yearly.

While these data are instructive, angel deals in Silicon Valley are likely to be larger and more heavily skewed towards technology-based startups than in the rest of the country. Assuming that the distribution and characteristics of angel deals in Silicon Valley relative to the United States are roughly similar to observed trends in venture capital financing deals, we assume that angel deals in Silicon Valley represent on the order of 30 percent of total U.S. angel activities, that the average national angel deal size is $500,000, and that two-thirds of these investments are made in product-based technology ventures.⁽⁷⁹⁾ This gives us a range estimate of total U.S. technology-oriented angel investments of around $1.5 billion.

(ii) Upper estimate: Angel disbursements to new technology startups, based on Reynolds and Sohl

New data from the National Panel Study of Business Start-ups reported by Paul Reynolds at the Cambridge workshop suggests that there are about 200,000 technology-based startups in existence; of these, about a third have employees and can be categorized as small businesses.⁽⁸⁰⁾ Reynolds’ estimate is of startups in existence and not the number of startups founded each year. The numbers from Reynolds are roughly consistent with the estimates by Jeff Sohl, based on surveys conducted by a team based at the University of New Hampshire. Jeff Sohl’s team found that in 1998 roughly 20,000 firms received funding from angel investors. We scale Reynolds’ number downwards, estimating that only about one in ten of the 200,000 startups reported to be in existence by Reynolds—about 20,000 business entities—seeks angel financing each year.

If each of these 20,000 technology startups received $500,000 in angel financing (an average consistent with the UNH surveys), then total angel financing for ESTD innovation would be roughly $10 billion. Given the tendency for businesses to use “technology” in a much looser sense than would technical people, we suggest that this is a generous, upper-range estimate.⁽⁸¹⁾

D. UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES

Academic institutions play a significant role in the national R&D enterprise. While the federal government provides most of the funds for academic R&D, universities and colleges have funded a steadily increasing portion of their own research budgets since the 1960s.⁽⁸²⁾ Universities and colleges provided $5.0 billion in funding for R&D in 1998; of this, $3.2 billion was devoted to basic research, $1.5 billion to applied research, and $0.3 billion to development.⁽⁸³⁾

Universities are the nation’s largest performers of basic research, conducting nearly half of all basic research. Most university basic research, however, is truly just that—basic. Very little, if any, of reported basic research expenditures is likely to fund ESTD work. Applied research activities are more likely to be pertinent to an analysis of ESTD in the academic setting. Some development funds could also be directed toward ESTD. Most surveys do not include a category that specifically tracks support for the commercialization of university intellectual property, complicating any effort to accurately tabulate such investments.

(i) Lower estimate: University support for faculty spin-offs

Universities have become an increasingly fertile ground for the development of new commercial innovations. Respondents to an Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) survey have reported that revenues from academic licenses nearly quadrupled between 1991 and 1998. The same survey reports that since 1980, more than 2,600 new startups have been formed based on a license from an academic institution, with at least 364 such startups being formed in 1998.⁽⁸⁴⁾ For every successful startup, there are likely many uncounted unsuccessful ventures that never succeed in crossing the divide from laboratory discovery to commercializable innovation. Calculating the portion of university funds that finance such ventures is difficult. Anecdotal evidence suggests that direct financial investments into faculty or student startups by universities is rare, though a number of universities have long-established venture capital funds designed to invest in such initiatives.⁽⁸⁵⁾ More significantly, universities offer support in the form of faculty and staff time, resources of the university technology transfer office, office space, and the like. Survey results reported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) show that universities funded $327 million in development activities, the “D” in R&D, which may capture post-ESTD efforts of faculty and students in converting academic research into commercially viable innovations.⁽⁸⁶⁾ A similar result would be obtained if 1,500 university-based ventures, one quarter of which were successfully licensed, received $200,000 each in university support. Thus, we use $327 million (the NSF number for university development expenditures) as the lower estimate for academic funding of ESTD.

(ii) Upper estimate: University funded applied research

Most ESTD activities within academic institutions are likely to be categorized as applied research in academic R&D surveys. Universities and colleges provided $1.5 billion for applied research in 1998. Some academic R&D (about 12 percent), however, occurs in fields of science and engineering that have limited prospects for technical breakthroughs of the kind leading to pre-innovation ESTD work. The remaining 88 percent of academic R&D occurs in fields where ESTD activity is more likely: the life sciences, physical sciences, environmental sciences, and engineering.⁽⁸⁷⁾ If we assume that a similar proportion of applied research funds is directed toward these fields, this means that about $1.4 billion in academic applied research funds are potentially available to fund ESTD research. A significant portion of applied research activities within academic laboratories may not have a focus on eventual commercialization of innovations. Nevertheless, we use $1.4 billion as our upper estimate. This exaggerates the portion of university R&D budgets aimed at promoting commercialization of laboratory inventions, but it sets a practical upper ceiling on estimates of potential university funding of ESTD research.

E. STATE GOVERNMENTS

States play an increasingly crucial role in encouraging regional economic growth through investments in science and technology development. A state government emphasis on applied research with commercial intent is also consistent with the widely accepted premise that state governments are strongly motivated to promote technological innovation and commercialization. They engage in these activities in order to maximize economic prosperity in their states; and, therefore, a considerable share of states’ applied R&D funds will potentially be directed toward ESTD activities.

In 1995, the latest year for which comprehensive data is available, state government funding for research and development totaled $2.4 billion, of which 56 percent was for basic research, 32 percent for applied research, and 12 percent for development and commercialization activities.⁽⁸⁸⁾

(i) Lower estimate: Portions of state-funded applied research

State governments provided $778 million in applied research funding in 1995. Based on overall state R&D financing patterns, $523 million of the total is projected to have been spent in fields of science and engineering where ESTD work potentially takes place. Looking at where state-funded applied research is performed can provide a clue to the character of work thus funded. In 1995, an estimated 80 percent of state-funded applied research took place within academic institutions (state colleges, universities, and hospitals), where the motive to commercialize on technical discoveries is presumably less compelling than in industry, the site of only about 4 percent of such research. We arbitrarily allocate only one-half of state-funded applied research performed in universities and colleges, or $209 million, to ESTD activities, since it is unlikely that all state-funded academic applied research is aimed at commercializing lab-bench discoveries. We include 75 percent of state-funded applied research performed by industry, $16 million, on the basis that most of it is funded in state-supported innovation programs, in incubators, and other innovation promoting programs.

An additional 10 percent of state R&D funds were spent intramurally by state government agencies, significantly lower than the portion of federal R&D dollars that remained in house. We allocate half of such research, or $26 million (half of 10 percent of $523 million) as potentially funding ESTD activities. Combining these figures provides a lower estimate of $251 million of state funds flowing to ESTD research.

(ii) Upper estimate: All state-funded applied research funding

Among the state programs that are narrowly targeted at funding pre-commercialization research are cooperative technology programs; public-private initiatives that sponsor the development and use of technology and improved practices by specific companies. Such programs exist in all fifty states, and include notable successes such as the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation and Maryland’s Enterprise Investment Fund. A State Science and Technology Institute study reported $405 million in combined state funding for cooperative technology programs across the country in 1995 (the latest year for which data is available), an increase of 32 percent since 1992.⁽⁸⁹⁾

We use a larger number, all state funding for applied research as reported by the State Science and Technology Institute—$778 million—as our upper estimate for state support of ESTD innovation. While this estimate significantly overstates the proportion of early-stage, pre-commercial research funding in state R&D budgets, it sets an operational upper limit for this assessment.

F. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

In 1998, federal obligations for research and development equaled $72.1 billion including $15.9 for basic research, $15.6 for applied research, and $40.6 billion for development.⁽⁹⁰⁾ Nearly half of this total is defense-related. While these funds play a significant role in the development of important military technologies, defense R&D is primarily motivated by national security considerations and largely falls outside of the sphere of market-driven commercial innovation activity that we are focused on here.⁽⁹¹⁾ We, therefore, exclude defense-related funds, other than SBIR (to which defense is the largest contributor), from our analysis of ESTD research. Of non-defense related funds, only a small proportion is intended explicitly to provide incentives for commercialization of new technical inventions. In addition to programs like the Advanced Technology Program and the Small Business Innovation Research program that focus on funding ESTD research, a massive variety of research initiatives exist within all federal cabinet agencies and dozens of smaller agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Within these programs are an unknown—and unknowable—number of R&D projects that might have the potential to lead to new firms or new products of an innovative nature.

(i) Lower estimate: ATP, SBIR, and STTR funding

The Advanced Technology Program (ATP) funds, on a cost-sharing basis, high-risk, early-stage, technology-based projects in both small and large firms. In 1998 (our reference year, chosen for reasons of data availability as well as correspondence with current funding levels), ATP made 79 awards at a total level of $460 million (public plus private funds). Of this total, ATP provided $235 million, with the remaining share financed by industry matching funds.⁽⁹²⁾

In the same year (1998) the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program funded 2,975 exploratory-stage (phase I) awards and 1,283 seed-stage (phase II) awards at a total level of $1.05 billion In addition, the Small Business Technology Transfer Program, which provides grants to small business and non-profit research institution partnerships to help bring laboratory results into the marketplace, awarded 208 exploratory-stage awards and 108 seed-stage awards at a total level of $67 million.

All funding by these programs is considered to be directed toward ESTD, since the statutory authority on which they rest call specifically for public-private research partnerships for enabling technologies to encourage high-tech innovations. As noted above, while ATP is explicitly directed toward encouraging innovations of broad value to the economy, SBIR is historically and by law focused on the mission of the agency. However, the flexibility of most agency’s R&D portfolio and the political popularity of SBIR has given rise to a substantial emphasis on the economic value attributed to SBIR, even if legally this value is a secondary consequence of the agency’s legislative mandate. The combined federal funding for these programs in 1998 was $1.4 billion and provides a lower estimate for federal ESTD funding flows.

(ii) Upper estimate: Portions of federal obligations for non-defense research and development

Total federal obligations for non-defense basic research are $14.8 billion, with most of these funds under the jurisdiction of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Over two-thirds of the 1998 total went to academic research institutions where the majority of the nation’s most fundamental basic research takes place. Strictly speaking, the scope of basic research work, particularly in academic institutions, would not include ESTD activities, but for purposes of building an upper range estimate on federal ESTD funding, we consider that as much as 10 percent, or $1.5 billion, of non-defense basic research might be allocated to ESTD work.

For applied research, federal non-defense obligations totaled $12.7 billion, with $10.6 billion in fields of science and engineering where ESTD work most likely takes place.⁽⁹³⁾ If half of all these applied research funds, including funds for intramural work at regulatory and non-research-based government agencies, are available and potentially used for ESTD research, we can set an upper range estimate of $5.3 billion for applied research funds to ESTD activities.

It might also be argued that some portion of federal funds for development flow into ESTD activities. Over 90 percent of the $9.7 billion in federal non-defense development funding is earmarked for NASA, the Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Health, and it is unlikely that administrators at these research-focused agencies would report a significant portion of ESTD work as development activities rather than in the generally more appropriate basic or applied research categories. We designate only 5 percent, or $0.5 billion, of federal non-defense development obligations as potentially flowing to ESTD projects.

Adding these fractional estimates for basic research, applied research, and development provides an upper estimate of $7.3 billion in federal funding for ESTD research.

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64. This section of the report was co-authored by Brian Min, Research Associate to the Between Invention and Innovation Project. Thomas Livesey, also a Research Associate, provided supporting research.

65. The definition of ESTD, early-stage technology development, is given at the front of the executive summary and is elaborated in Part I.

66. Important sources are the NSF surveys on research and development funding and expenditures, data on the venture capital industry from Venture Economics, and the limited data on angel investing reported by Sohl (1999) and van Osnabrugge and Robinson (2000).

67. See, for example, Council on Competitiveness (1996): “The old distinctions between basic and applied research have proven politically unproductive and no longer reflect the realities of the innovation process.”

68. We do not suggest that these statistics in their raw form are somehow invalid as predictors of innovation in general. We only mean to suggest that these numbers overstate the inputs into early-stage technology development activities.

69. National Science Board (2000), tables 2–5, 2–9, 2–13, and 2–17.

70. National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Commerce (1999). Note that firms with less than four persons engaged primarily in R&D are not asked to respond to the survey, and many highly innovative small firms do not have an internal organization for R&D activities and thus do not report in these surveys.

71. Christensen (1997) offers a detailed elaboration of the concept of disruptive technologies.

72. Tassey (2001).

73. National Science Foundation (2000c), tables A–5 and A–6.

74. Bean, Russo, and Whiteley (2000), table 6.

75. As defined by the NSF’s Industrial Research & Development Information System (IRIS), “Basic research analyzes properties, structures, and relationships toward formulating and testing hypotheses, theories, or laws. As used in this survey, industrial basic research is the pursuit of new scientific knowledge or understanding that does not have specific immediate commercial objectives, although it may be in fields of present or potential commercial interest.”

76. National Science Board (2000), table 2–9.

77. National Science Board (2000), table 7–14, based on data from Venture Economics.

78. Bridge loans represent a particularly important source. These (usually small) loans are provided to early stage ventures prior to an initial round of funding. If a funding round takes place, the loans are converted to equity. We thank Josh Lerner for emphasizing this point.

79. According to the PriceWaterhouseCoopers MoneyTree survey, VC investments in Silicon Valley in 1998 were $4.6 billion, or 30 percent of the national total of $15.3 billion.

80. Based on the “National Panel Study of U.S. Business Startups,” Reynolds estimates that there are fifteen million entrepreneurs in the United States, that 3 percent (approximately 450,000) of entrepreneurs are technology entrepreneurs involved in a startup, and that the average startup has a team size of two. This guess leads to an estimated of 200,000 startups in existence (not startups created each year). Reynolds (2000) and personal communication with Reynolds.

81. From discussions with practitioners and reading of the popular press, we suspect that the very broad use of the word “technology” to include any activity involving information technology or software development may carry over to survey results.

82. Surveys typically ask universities for their R&D expenditures by source, identifying states, federal, industry, and independent laboratories as specific sources and lumping all other sources of income to the university, including gifts from individuals and philanthropy from industry (in contrast to contracts) as “university own funds.”

83. National Science Board (2000), tables 2–9, 2–13, and 2–17.

84. Association of University Technology Managers (2000).

85. Lerner (1999).

86. National Science Board (2000), tables 2–17.

87. National Science Foundation (2000a), table B–3.

88. State Science and Technology Institute (1998), table 1 (most recent available data).

89. State Science and Technology Institute (1996).

90. According to the NSF, Federal obligations represent the amounts for orders placed, contracts awarded, services received, and similar transactions during a given period, regardless of when funds were appropriated or payment required. Obligations data allows for detailed analysis of where Federal dollars are ultimately spent. Budget authority data cannot provide such insight since many agency R&D programs do not receive explicit line items in the Federal budget. National Science Board (2000), tables 2–25, 2–27, 2–29, and 2–31.

91. Alic, Branscomb et al, (1992).

92. The Advanced Technology Program <www.atp.nist.gov> summarizes its mission as follows: “The Advanced Technology Program (ATP) bridges the gap between the research lab and the market place, stimulating prosperity through innovation. Through partnerships with the private sector, ATP’s early stage investment is accelerating the development of innovative technologies that promise significant commercial payoffs and widespread benefits for the nation.” Significantly, two-thirds of ATP funds were awarded to joint venture projects; these are the kinds of projects one might presume carry the highest technical and financial risks, precipitating the formation of such partnerships. National Science Board (2000), table 2–61.

93. National Science Board (2000), Table 2–38.

Date created: February 14, 2003
Last updated: August 2, 2005

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