Bridging the Gap between Academic Researchers and Industrial Corporations
| Published date | 01 January 1987 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb057467 |
| Date | 01 January 1987 |
| Pages | 19-24 |
| Author | David Connell |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
Bridging the Gap
between
Academic
Researchers
and Industrial
Corporations*
by David Connell
Deloitte Haskins and Sells European High
Technology Group
The New Industrial Priorities
The last 25 years have seen a transformation in the world
economy, with the emergence of Japan as a major industrial
power and, more recently, of a whole series of "newly
industrialised countries" able to undercut even the Japanese
on the cost of manufacturing quite sophisticated electronic
and engineering products. And, as wage costs in Korea,
Taiwan and Singapore advance, they are being followed in
turn by China and India, with even lower costs and fast
maturing industrial infrastructures.
This process inexorably forces the advanced nations of the
West to focus on products which do not compete so much
on price and whose technology is more difficult to acquire.
In essence, this means R&D-based products in the early
stages of their life cycles or complex systems projects
requiring input from a diverse range of technical skills. For,
once a technology begins to stabilise, it must gravitate
naturally towards the lower-cost producers. Digital watches
and business micros are just two examples of products
where this process has already taken place.
These competitive pressures are aggravated by the
increasing pace of technological change and the growing
internationalism of the markets for manufactured products.
And there are special problems for European companies.
Individually, national markets do not provide an adequate
base from which to support the level of R&D and marketing
expenditures required to compete with US and Japanese
companies.
To be successful in the world markets of the 1980s and
1990s, the industrial companies of the EEC nations must,
therefore, be highly efficient at taking new technological
ideas,
developing them into marketable products (or using
them to improve existing ones) and aggressively selling them
into all the major markets of the world.
In order to devise policy instruments which promote this,
we must first understand where and how the ideas for new
technology-based products arise and by what processes
they are most effectively exploited commercially.
The Innovation Process
The processes by which new technological ideas find their
way into commercial application are complex and lengthy.
For example, it took over 20 years between the construction
of the first laser by T.H. Maiman and its incorporation,
through compact disc players, into everyday life. Many ideas
for new products come from work which is incidental to
the primary objective of the research scientist as he strives
to use the most advanced sensing, measurement, analysis
and computational techniques to take his experiments to
the limits of existing human knowledge.
Some fascinating research has been done on innovation in
the last 15 years, most notably at the Sloan School of
Management at MIT and at the Science Policy Research Unit
at Sussex University. The evidence is complex and difficult
to interpret, but there are seven points which should be
emphasised in particular:
(1) Innovation takes place in a complex and unstructured
way, and the innovation process differs according to
the type of business. Informal interaction between
disciplines and freedom to experiment is particularly
important during the early ideas-generation stage of
the process.
(2) At the same time, the rather informal style of
management which suits these early stages of
product development must be replaced by a much
tighter approach to project control as the
development work progresses and the product
moves into the production and marketing phases.
(3) Customers provide the ideas for a very high
proportion of innovations, particularly in certain
sectors, such as scientific instruments and process
plant.
(4) Many radically new ideas arise from the process of
technology push rather than market
pull;
for example,
there was no market for personal computers until
advances in integrated circuit technology made them
possible.
(5) Nearly a quarter of all innovations arise from outside
the commercial organisation that takes them up.
(6) The role of the product champion is crucial to
carrying any new innovation through to
commercialisation. It is often difficult for product
champions to operate effectively in large companies;
the personal characteristics of determination and
total commitment to an idea make them difficult to
work
with.
(7) Not surprisingly, therefore, small firms tend to be
particularly effective as innovators. Some estimates
suggest that at least 50 per cent of all major
innovations originate from small firms or independent
inventors.
Against this background, the role of the individual
technologist and the small entrepreneurial business achieves
*Paper delivered at the Commission of the European Communities
Symposium on "The Utilisation of the Results of Public or Publicly Funded
Research and Development" in Luxembourg on 25 September 1986.
IMDS • JANUARY/FEBRUARY • 1987 19
To continue reading
Request your trial