NISTIR 6917
Different Timelines for Different Technologies:
Evidence from the Advanced Technology Program

IV. Summary Profile

Section IV provides a detailed profile of the projects and organizations included in the study to establish linkages between the analytical models and technology and business goals and characteristics of ATP-funded companies.

A. Overview of Technology Areas and Targeted Industrial Sectors

ATP classifies projects according to the core technology being developed. The five major categories used in recent years are biotechnology, electronics, information technology, advanced materials-chemistry, and manufacturing. The life-cycle model tends to merge technology with firm and industry, consistent with Utterback’s evolution of his model from its early focus on innovation and firms to its later focus on industries. In some cases, a technology emerges from one industry to ultimately address another industry, or it provides the nucleus for a new industry. Pavitt and others have elaborated on the relationship between technology-based suppliers and more mature industries.

Many ATP projects involve interdisciplinary technologies. For example, ATP’s Microelectronics Manufacturing Infrastructure and Photonics Manufacturing Focused Programs develop both manufacturing and electronics capabilities, while Materials Processing for Heavy Manufacturing advances R&D supporting applications in materials structure and manufacturing processing.

The technology platforms funded by ATP enable commercial activity across multiple industry and market sectors, even though initially they tend to target a particular industry. A cross-section of technologies under development and target industries (by 2 to 3 digit SIC) yields the following thumbnail sketches of the projects covered in this study. (For projects funded through 1998, the BRS used the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system to classify use sectors for commercial applications of ATP-funded technologies.)

Biotechnology
Biotechnologies potentially form the foundation for new health-care-related markets not yet encompassed by Bureau of the Census classification systems. Many projects with health-care applications will ultimately benefit Pharmaceuticals (SIC 283) through new drug discovery and delivery methods. In addition, ATP’s biotechnology projects target industry sectors as diverse as medical and laboratory instruments (SIC 382), food products, and aquaculture. ATP has made targeted investments in Tissue Engineering and Tools for DNA Diagnostics through focused programs.

Manufacturing
ATP-funded manufacturing technologies support automobile and aircraft manufacturing, machine tools, intelligent control and manufacturing, and other discrete and flexible manufacturing systems. Most of the applications from this technology area have been classified by the companies as industrial machinery (SIC 35), transportation equipment (SIC 37), fabricated metals (SIC 34), or instruments (SIC 38). ATP has made investments in motor vehicle manufacturing technologies through its focused programs. Many other projects classified by core technology as information technology or advanced materials or electronics will result in manufactured products and involve manufacturing process issues.

Advanced Materials-Chemistry
This technology sector is perhaps the most heterogeneous in ATP’s classification system. The materials subcategories include abrasives/coatings/composites (the subcategory with the highest frequency), metals/alloys, and construction materials. The chemicals subsection includes separation technologies, catalysis, food processing, as well as energy and environmental technologies. Materials and chemistry projects typically target the chemicals (SIC 28), industrial machinery (SIC 35), electrical equipment (SIC 36) for energy applications, motor vehicles (SIC 37), and oil and gas drilling (SIC 13) industries, as well as others. These target industries reflect ATP’s focused programs in Manufacturing Composite Structures, Premium Power, Catalysis/Biocatalysis, and Selective Membrane Platforms.⁽¹⁾

Electronics Computer Hardware, and Communications
This area includes semiconductors, other computer hardware, microelectronic fabrication technology, communication for data, voice, and video, and optics and photonics. Many of the projects interface with manufacturing processes; for example, components of electronics systems interface with particular applications in photonics and microelectronics manufacturing. These projects most typically have target applications in electrical and electronic equipment (SIC 36) or instruments (SIC 38).

Information Technology
Projects in this area typically target applications in business services, health care, or manufacturing. Specialized technologies include pattern recognition, image processing, and security systems based in biometrics capabilities. Information technologies are an acknowledged vehicle for radical process innovation in a number of mature manufacturing industries as well as a platform for a wide range of potential new businesses.

ATP has targeted a number of different industry sectors and types of IT solutions with its IT-related focused programs. Projects funded in ATP’s Component-Based Software Focused Program develop technologies needed to enable multi-use software components that can be sold to systems integrators and custom builders to create custom manufacturing applications. Projects funded in ATP’s Manufacturing Integration Focused Program support critical efficiency and quality issues in manufacturing and services. The program in Information Infrastructure for Healthcare fosters underlying technologies such as digital libraries, knowledge-based systems, and natural language processing used in information processing and management. Medical software systems are used, for example, in patient monitoring, medical procedures management and analysis, and overall care integration. ATP-supported information technologies have typically targeted service industries such as business services (SIC 73) and health services (SIC 80). Many support telecommunications or broadcasting (SIC 366). A smaller focused program developed information technologies targeted at video information networking.

B. Profile of Participants, Projects, and Applications

The study draws primarily upon BRS data for ATP project participants and projects funded by the program since 1993 and reporting through September 1999. The complete data set includes 669 project participants in 336 projects. These project participants reported on 1,172 planned commercial applications of their ATP-funded technologies. Not all 669 participants or projects provided information on commercial applications. (Some organizations in joint-venture projects, particularly universities, have a pure research or support role and do not have direct or immediate plans to commercialize the results of their efforts. Rather, they are building infrastructure and expertise that will support subsequent R&D efforts or other contract research.) Therefore, we reduced our dataset to the data records from 558 organizations in 299 projects that reported the plans for the 1,172 commercial applications. The data from the 558 organizations form the basis for the analyses in Steps 2–4. In Step 5, we used reduced sets for which matched Baseline and Close-out Reports were available, and separately for which Post-project Surveys were available. Table 3 summarizes this spectrum of data by report type.

Table 3. Summary of Projects, Participants, and Applications, by Report Type

The dataset for the 558 participants in 299 projects reflects 81% of all ATP awards and 63% of all project participants in awards made 1993–1998. Some participants of very large ATP joint ventures are relieved from the ATP business reporting responsibility, and non-profit organizations without R&D responsibility or commercialization plans are likewise exempt from ATP’s business reporting requirement. The major reduction in coverage is due to failure to comply with the reporting requirement at all (approximately 15% of participants) or failure to provide information about commercialization plans (approximately 15% of participants, including universities and others in joint ventures with little commercialization intent).

Table 4 provides a profile of projects and participants by technology area. Materials-chemistry and IT have the largest number of both participants and projects. Participants/project, a density measure, shows that manufacturing and electronics/photonics have the highest average number of participants per project. Many of these projects are organized as joint ventures, with manufacturing technology–based joint ventures having more participants, on average, than others.

Table 5 further profiles project participants for each technology area by type of ATP project and size/type of organization. The distributions vary considerably across technology areas. For example, two-thirds of biotechnology participants are single applicants (SAs), by far the largest proportion across any of the technologies, but 62% or more of participants in projects developing the other four technologies are members of a joint venture. Furthermore, biotechnology participants involve the largest proportion (71%) of small companies. For other technology areas, 27–46% of project participants are small firms.

Table 5. Distribution of Partricipants in Each Technology Area, by Organization Type/Size and Project Type

With the exception of the biotechnology projects, most of the projects in each technology area are joint ventures. ATP-funded biotechnology firms have tended to use subcontracting mechanisms rather than a joint-venture structure to perform collaborative R&D. Many have subcontractor relationships with universities or other small firms. Many are also engaged in joint research and marketing agreements with larger biotech, pharmaceutical, or chemicals firms. The absence of joint ventures and the large number of relationships with universities likely reflect the very early-stage R&D being conducted in biotechnology and the preponderance of small firms.⁽²⁾

Table 6 shows the distribution of commercial applications by technology area. Averages per participant and project are based on the 558 participants in 299 projects; that is, no assumptions are made about projects for which no applications had yet been reported. Sixty-one percent of applications come from joint venture members and 39% from Single Applicants. The larger number of applications per project for manufacturing technologies likely reflects the larger dollar size of these projects (mainly joint ventures) and the large number of participants in many. Biotechnology projects, on the other hand, had the lowest number of planned applications per project, apparently reflecting the small number of joint ventures and the long time to market for most applications (discussed in later sections of the study). More than half of the applications came from projects developing IT or materials–chemistry technologies.

Table 6. Distribution of Commercial Applications, by Technology Area

Most ATP projects involve development of technology platforms that support a number of different commercial applications. Participants in joint ventures often pursue a mix of their own applications and joint applications with others.

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1. For a historical, business, and R&D overview of industrial chemicals, see Arora and Gambarella (1999).

2. Audretsch (2001) and others have noted the important role of university scientists in biotechnology companies and the strong ties to universities.

Return to Table of Contents or go to V. Observed Variations in Timelines for Commercialization

Date created: March 4, 2003
Last updated: April 12, 2005

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