Accelerating Technology Transfer in R&D Consortia

Since the passage of the National Cooperative Research Act in October 1984, more than 150 R&D consortia have filed with the U.S. Department of Justice. Some of the more prominent U.S. consortia are the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) and SEMATECH in Austin, Texas, the Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Semiconductor Research Corporation in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, the Biotechnology Research and Development Corporation in Peoria, Illinois, the Software Productivity Consortium in Herndon, Virginia, and the Center for Advanced Television Studies in Boston, Massachusetts. These consortia cover a range of emerging technologies including telecommunications, microelectronics, semiconductor manufacturing, biotechnology, software engineering, transportation, and superconductivity. They are composed of 1,157 business, government and academic organizations. Data on 902 of the business organizations in the IC(2) Institute's consortia database shows that 843 are U.S. companies and 42 are foreign firms. The balance are state and Federal government agencies, U.S. and foreign universities, and other consortia. The table below lists the U.S. firms involved in six or more consortia. While consortia vary in organizational structure, technological emphasis, funding mechanisms, and personnel make-up, they all share one abiding issue which relates to their purpose for being formed the transfer of technology to their member companies in an efficient, timely manner. Technology transfer is the application of knowledge. It involves any geographical shift of technology (ideas as well as physical products): person-to-person, group-to-group, or organization-to-organization. There are two fundamental aspects to the transfer process. First, the technology must be created or discovered. Second, it must be expeditiously transferred to and used by the appropriate receptor. The second aspect is proving to be at least as challenging and certainly more controversial than the first. R&D consortia pose unique management challenges and they represent a new type of organizational form for several reasons. Consortia are often composed of companies (i.e., shareholders) that seek mutually beneficial cooperative research while remaining competitors in the marketplace. They are thus often composed of personnel from radically different corporate cultures. In addition, shareholder members present different managerial priorities, policies and procedures. As a result, companies often participate in a consortium for different and sometimes conflicting reasons. Within any single consortium, different research programs, utilizing different research methodologies are commonly being pursued simultaneously. Consortium managers and researchers are thus separated from shareholder organizations by a variety of professional, technological, strategic, and cultural barriers. Although they may be less pronounced, similar barriers to technology transfer exist between the R&D laboratory and the production and marketing departments of a single firm, or between corporate R&D and a firm's divisions. This paper takes the position that lessons learned about technology transfer in a consortium are important for firms trying to effect the timely transfer of technology from the research bench to the marketplace. These lessons provide useful insights on practical ways to speed technology transfer across the functional departments of an organization. Methodology An applied management model for technology transfer has been developed from a year-long study of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), a major, for-profit, U.S. R&D consortium that was established in 1983. From January to May 1989 in-depth interviews were conducted with managers and scientists at the consortium and with shareholder representatives. …