Supporting Innovation.

Research laboratories may be too complex for policy makers to understand.

The laboratory where the world's first atomic bomb was built in the deepest secrecy now works on environmental clean-up projects, materials research, and traffic modeling. It even sponsors opportunity workshops

Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is one of 16,000 research and development (R&D) laboratories in the United States. These labs represent a diverse set of technical capabilities and organizational structures. Yet, the very diversity and complexity of these labs may compromise their ability to meet the nation's future goals, suggest science-policy analysts Michael Crow and Barry Bozeman. Public policy makers tend to treat these labs as homogeneous and stable institutions, when such is not the case. At stake is some $25 billion of federal funding a year to support the innovations that will drive the future economy.

"During several years of studying R&D laboratories, we have mused about why R&D policy makers pay so little attention to the institutions charged with carrying out their policy directives," Crow and Bozeman write in their recent book, Limited by Design: R&D Laboratories in the U.S. National Innovation System. One reason for the lack of attention may be that scientific research and technological development in general - and the complexity of the institutions conducting that work - are too hard for policy makers to understand.

"The complexity of U.S. R&D laboratories is so daunting as to discourage attention to detail," the authors speculate. "There are approximately 700 federal labs directly funded by the U.S. government, at least 100 of which are of sufficient size and scope to be considered significant contributors in themselves to the national innovation system. Hundreds of university labs produce everything from new Ph.D.s in chemistry to new synthetic proteins to new rat poisons. To this mix one must add nearly 14,000 industrial laboratories, about 1,000 of which are consequential to the national science and technology effort, including several leading-edge innovators. The sheer numbers defy an 'up close and personal' perspective."

Because U.S. policy makers are unlikely to try to monitor all 16,000 of the nation's R&D laboratories, the authors recommend focusing on a sampling of the relatively small subset of "player" labs - the approximately 200-300 with real potential to contribute to public-domain science, innovation, and economic development. Other policy principles include evaluating policies and labs holistically in terms of their impact on the national innovation system, reinforcing individual laboratories for what they do well, and judging new missions in terms of their net impact compared with alternative uses of funds.

Unless policy makers get a better handle on how R&D is performed, they will have no way of knowing how much to invest and what areas of research would benefit the nation most, warns a recent report from the National Academies. Budget reductions have slashed research in electrical engineering, physics, mechanical engineering, and geological sciences - all areas of research that could produce long-term benefits. "The reasons for these shifts in priorities and their implications for the future need to be evaluated carefully," the study concludes.

Sources: Limited by Design: R&D Laboratories in the U.S. National Innovation System by Michael Crow and Barry Bozeman. Columbia University Press. Web site www.columbia.edu/cu/cup. 1998. 321 pages. $40. (Order from the World Future Society's Web site, www.wfs.org/specials.htm.)

National Academies, Office of News and Public Information, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20418. Telephone 1-202-334-2000; Web site www.nas.edu.

Fruits of Research and Development

Commercial and government-supported R&D laboratories in the United States have contributed heavily to technological and economic progress. Among the leaders and a few samples of their accomplishments:

* Goddard Space Flight Center (www.gsfc.nasa.gov): Provided the first image of Earth from space (Explorer VI, 1959). Managed the service mission to correct the Hubble Space Telescope's vision. Coordinates NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program to study the global environmental system.

* National Institutes of Health (www.nih.gov): Research contributing to major health improvements: Mortality from heart disease dropped 41% between 1971 and 1991. Death rates from stroke decreased 59%. Survival rates for cancer increased 52%.

* National Institute of Standards and Technology (www.nist.gov): Provides the standards of measurement for commerce and industry; laid the foundation for advances in lighting and electric power usage, materials testing, temperature measurement, etc.

* Oak Ridge National Laboratory (www.ornl.gov): Produced plutonium for the Manhattan Project. Developed radioisotopes for medicine. Now also performs R&D in energy efficiency, environmental science and technology, and biological sciences.

* Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (www.llnl.gov): Established as the second nuclear weapons laboratory (after Los Alamos) to design thermonuclear weapons. Current projects include biological weapons defense systems, a table-top x-ray laser for use in plasma physics, and an array of advanced optical technologies.

* Battelle (www.battelle.org): Developed xerographic machine technology, compact discs, universal product codes, and "sandwich" coins - the quarters, dimes, dollars, and half-dollars minted after 1965, containing a thin layer of copper between layers of nickel. Current areas of research include electronic cash systems, biomass gasification systems, and efforts to reduce teen smoking.

* Pfizer Pharmaceuticals (www.pfizer.com): Discovered treatments for a wide diversity of illnesses, ranging from antibiotics to antidepressants. Current research is largely based on Pfizer's access to isolated human genes. Most recent "star" product: Viagra, for treating impotence.

* Lucent Technologies (www. lucent.com): As Bell Labs, Lucent invented transistors, lasers, and cellular mobile communications. Science-based research - such as confirmation of the wave nature of electrons and the discovery of the faint background radiation remaining from the Big Bang - has led to several Nobel Prizes.

Sources: Limited by Design and individual laboratories named.