Time lag assessment between research funding and output in emerging technologies

Purpose – In this paper, an analysis is presented of the research funding towards nanotechnology at the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) and its relationship to the research output in Nanoscope, an application area of nanotechnology.Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyzes the data collected from 1997 till 2006 and derives a definitive time lag between the allocation of research funds and issued patents and published journals. This assessment is achieved by identifying growth trends in patents, funds and publications and doing a curve‐fit analysis using the Fisher‐Pry model. Linear regression analysis is used to show the correlation between the funding and research outputs. Alongside, non‐linear programming objective function optimization technique is used to derive the time lag in years for each of the research outputs from the year of funds granted.Findings – This paper demonstrated that there is a strong correlation between research funding and different research outputs. The time lag b...

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