Abstract
This chapter’s contribution to the edited volume presents the results of a pilot study in which David Roessner, Lynne Manrique, and Jongwon Park test the feasibility of estimating quantitatively the regional and economic impacts of NSF-supported Engineering Research Centers (ERC), one of the important and highly visible types of cooperative research centers that are the focus of this book. The empirical bases for the study were detailed case studies of the impacts of five ERCs. The authors found that the profile of regional and, especially, national economic impact estimates varied widely across the centers studied. Only some of these variations could be attributed to ERC characteristics; most were the result of variations in the amount and type of data that could be obtained from the centers involved and the companies with which they worked. Roessner and colleagues concluded that even the most conscientious and costly data collection efforts would be unlikely to yield comparable data across centers because the accessibility of key data, especially proprietary data, will differ unpredictably from center to center. Further, focusing on narrowly-conceived, quantifiable economic data alone should be avoided in these kinds of impact studies; that is, studies that seek to estimate the economic impact of university-based cooperative research centers with multiple objectives such as major advances in research; interdisciplinary, team-based educational experiences for students; and knowledge exchange with industry. Emphasis on quantifiable impacts will underestimate the range and value of the actual impact of ERC-like centers, masking the much broader and, based on our findings, larger and more significant impacts on the economy and society. For a complementary examination, see the more general treatment of evaluation challenges for large Âgovernment-established cooperative research centers in the chapter contributed by Feller and colleagues.
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Notes
- 1.
Caltech’s Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering; Virginia Tech’s Center for Power Electronics Systems; University of Michigan’s Center for Wireless Integrated MicroSystems; The Center for Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology at Johns Hopkins; and the Georgia Tech/Emory Center for the Engineering of Living Tissue.
- 2.
See Georghiou and Roessner (2000) for a brief review of these studies. Several extension program impact studies have been conducted since that time, generally following the same approach.
- 3.
The limitations of RIMS II are well known and need not be reviewed here. Despite its limitations, a more precise tool for indicating indirect and induced economic effects of new expenditures by organizations has not been developed, and the model remains widely used.
- 4.
See Mansfield (1996) for a discussion of how the consumer surplus model can be applied to assessment of innovation-related public programs such as the Advanced Technology Program, and Mansfield (1977) for the original paper illustrating the calculation of social and private returns to industrial innovation. We are aware of the limitations of this approach, as well as those of alternative approaches, but chose it because of its feasibility for this pilot study with its attendant resource and data access constraints. Notable among virtually all economic impact methods is their inability to estimate quantitatively the economic impacts of the research and education benefits of ERCs and similar university-based centers.
- 5.
Scherer and Harhoff (2000) studied the size distribution of financial returns from eight sets of data on inventions and innovations attributable to private sector firms and universities. They found that the distributions were all highly skewed, with the top 10% of sample members capturing from 48 to 93% of the total sample returns.
- 6.
Space limitations prevent us from providing all details of the calculations involved. These and other details, such as the size, technical foci, and industry affiliations of the ERCs studied, are provided in our final report to the National Science Foundation, available upon request from the lead author of this chapter.
- 7.
Telephone interview with Richard Zhang and Vlatko Vlatkovic, General Electric Global Research, 27 July 2007; telephone interview with Mike Briere, Vice President for R&D, International Rectifier, 27 July 2007.
- 8.
Obviously we made no effort in this study to assess the performance or productivity of ERCs with respect to either their own specific objectives or NSF’s mandated program goals. Nonperforming ERCs are quickly identified at an early stage in their history and either terminated or reorganized so that, by the end of their period of NSF support, it can be assumed that all ERCs are performing at a high level and achieving their basic research, education, and knowledge transfer goals.
- 9.
Future work should address, for example, questions such as: What types of data are needed to properly address the outcomes of ERC research and education activities? How can the benefits of developing a new workforce to lead innovation be captured? How can the effects that ERC graduates have on the firms that hired them be assessed more systematically? How might a wider range of ERC impacts, such as changes in firms’ R&D agendas, new partnerships, stronger industry–university collaborations, enhanced competitiveness, and new relationships between firms and their suppliers and customers, be documented?
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Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the support of NSF contract D050513 for the work described in this chapter. Any conclusions, findings, or recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NSF or the US government. We are also extremely grateful to the management and staff of the five ERCs we studied for their gracious reception and help, and to the numerous representatives from companies involved in these ERCs for their willingness to discuss their interactions with center faculty, staff, students, and graduates, and the impact their interactions had on their companies and related industries.
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Roessner, D., Manrique, L., Park, J. (2013). Estimating the Regional and National Economic Impact of Engineering-Focused Cooperative Research Centers. In: Boardman, C., Gray, D., Rivers, D. (eds) Cooperative Research Centers and Technical Innovation. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4388-9_11
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