SCIENCE & R&D

Our Nation’s economic growth depends on our capacity to educate, innovate, and build. Long-term national investments in basic and applied research and development (R&D) play an important role in the flow of market-based innovations through a complex system that leverages the combined talents of scientists and engineers, entrepreneurs, business managers and industrialists. These funds have led to everything from small entrepreneurial initiatives to growth in high technology industries with the concomitant employment of millions of workers. The large impact on employment results from innovation impacts not only in high tech enterprises, but also other industries that benefit from increased capabilities and productivity. Mutually reinforcing and complementary investments in R&D by both private and public sectors work in concert to support the development, production, and commercialization of new products and processes.

Investment in R&D is not the only factor that affects the rate of and capacity for innovation. Public policies, including monetary policy, tax policy, standards, procurement, regulatory policy, the availability of a skilled technical workforce, and market access are also important in establishing an environment that fosters innovation. Given this critical time in our Nation’s economic trajectory, careful consideration of our portfolio of innovation policies—including R&D investment practices and public policy—is needed to foster national prosperity and to increase national access to the global economy.

How R&D and science fosters innovation?

Innovation has long been recognized as an important driver of economic growth. Empirical research and surveys of business activities show that innovation leads to new and improved products and services, higher productivity, and lower prices. As a result, economies that have consistently high levels of innovation also tend to have high levels of growth.

National investment in basic and applied research and development importantly contributes to the flow of market-based innovations in ways that can be characterized as an “innovation ecosystem.” Innovation is defined as the introduction of new or significantly improved products (goods or services), processes, organizational methods, and marketing methods in internal business practices or in the open marketplace. R&D and other intangible investments such as investments in software, higher education, and worker training are key inputs driving innovation. The term “ecosystem” emphasizes complexity of the innovation process – one that is highly dynamic, has many interdependencies, and is always evolving. Transformative innovation is more likely when basic research leads to quantum steps in expanding knowledge or through synergies when progress in multiple areas of science or technology complement each other to provide new composite capabilities. These investments in basic research create the building blocks for innovation by creating a transformative knowledge base upon which the private sector can draw.

The relationship between R&D and innovation is highly complex. Investment in R&D is not synonymous with innovation. Many firms introduce new products without R&D. However, it is possible to demonstrate the relationship between the amount of investment in R&D and product and process innovation for a broad cross-section of industries.

Businesses, operating in a competitive global market system, have numerous advantages in the creation and implementation of useful new ideas. With the rise of a technology-based approach to the production of new goods and services, the organization of high-tech business has changed globally.

Although pathways of innovation cannot be predicted, government policies have evolved that support diffusion of knowledge and deployment of new technologies as well as research and discovery. These strategies include direct and indirect investments in basic and applied R&D and human capital development, and enacting policies that foster innovation by facilitating government/academic/non-profit and industry collaborations, promoting technology transfer, and creating favorable tax, regulatory, and visa policies.

    B. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

The re are two significant components of innovation process: knowledge and successful diffusion of that knowledge resulting in new products or services being offered to customers or in other more common words – invention and successful implementation. Inventions are very often made in universities and research institutes. To turn those inventions into successful innovations they must be transferred to organizations with adequate marketing experience, global presence and real implementation power. This is the responsibility of technology transfer process.

In general the concept technology transfer covers not only the technology transfer from academia to industry. It is a broad field that ranges from internal corporate technology transfer to international technology transfer. Technology transfer can be defined as the process of sharing of or acquiring/providing/licensing skills, knowledge, technologies, intellectual property, technology development personnel or entire teams, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments, companies, research institutions and other organizations to enable the accessibility of scientific and technological developments to a wider range of users who can then further develop and exploit the technology into new products, processes, applications, materials or services .

The ways of technology transfer depend on the involved parties and the reasons behind technology transfer. They vary from acquisitions of companies through technology transfer in order to release a new product or service based on the technology acquired, to collaborations in technology transfer efforts among companies located in a cluster.

The innovation and technology transfer process tries to overcome these issues by introducing three roles that act in the field of innovation and technology transfer: technology supplier, technology receiver, and technology transfer facilitator. Organization can perform more than one role in innovation and technology transfer process as well as one role can be performed by more than one organization.

  1. Technology supplier

Technology supplier organizations focus on technology development. Primary candidates for this role are universities and research institutes. The technology development process can be defined as a set of few steps: basic research, applied research and other.

  1. Technology receiver

Technology receiver organizations are the ones that take new technology and implement it to improve their products, services, processes or work environment. This process is called innovation and can be defined as consisting of five activities: maintaining new technology awareness, selection of new technologies, preparation for infusion (the act of adding one thing to another to make it stronger or better), infusion of new technologies and innovation management.

  1. Technology transfer facilitator

Technology transfer facilitator organizations are the ones that enable and in many cases drive technology transfer. These might be technology transfer broker organizations, technology transfer offices established in research institutions or collaborative university industry, consulting companies or any organizations that facilitate and support technology transfer process. The technology transfer support process can be defined as consisting of such activities as contacts development; market needs identification, search for available technology, search for industrial application and contractual support. Technology transfer broker organizations can be defined as a bridge between technology supplier and technology receiver. Technology transfer broker supports technology transfer process by bringing together the ones that develop new technology and the ones that need it.

 Push and Pull Approaches

Just what are “push” and “pull” marketing?

Describing push marketing is easy (or at least it should be). Push marketing is the traditional marketing and advertising seen everywhere. Push marketing starts with the product or service, identifies the features or benefits that potential customers will find most compelling, and then utilizes targeting and segmentation to “push” carefully crafted marketing messages out via a variety of advertising, sales, and social media channels to the most likely potential customers. Pull marketing is something else entirely (and should be in order to maximize your investment in marketing). While push marketing focuses on the most likely potential customers, pull marketing should be focused on a totally different group of people – non-customers who are not yet ready to become customers at this time.

An effective pull marketing strategy begins with extensive research into what makes a person evolve from someone who is disinterested and unaware of a solution area, to seeing how it might fit into their personal or professional lives and make it better.

This usually involves the creation of content that will raise awareness, interest, inspiration, and understanding of the whole solution area, and the need for it, not just the features and benefits of one company’s particular product or service. Pull marketing strategies are very uncomfortable for most marketers, and as a result most companies have no pull to balance their push.

So which is better for an organization – push marketing or pull marketing?

Any organization that is interested in sustained revenue and profitability growth over time should invest in both, but most companies are seduced by the immediate payback of push marketing and pursue only push marketing strategies. Meanwhile, pull marketing helps grow new potential customers (or accelerates their purchase readiness timeline), so it is equally important in the long run. Smart companies, organizations that intend to succeed in the long run, need to invest in both push and pull marketing strategies in order to keep their sales pipeline full both for now AND for the future. Push or pull? The answer lies in… the balance.

And what about for marketing an innovation – push or pull?

The more disruptive an innovation is likely to be, the more important it will be for you to craft and execute an effective pull marketing strategy. The main reason is that in every situation, despite the popular belief among inventors, a customer already has a solution. It may be the “do nothing” solution, but they have a solution.

There are 2 processes of innovation:

  1. TECHNOLOGY PUSH INNOVATION

  • Technology Push is where the technology is available and the designers make a product to use
  • The best example of this is touch screen technology; this was first developed by the Royal Radar Establishment. In the 80s Hewlett Packard picked up on this technology and brought out a touch screen computer. Later as the technology became refined and could recognize hand writing, Apples PDA and the Palm Pilot.Over recent years the technology has become more and more advanced and is now found in the majority of mobile phones, laptops and Other examples; cassettes, products with smaller components.

  1. MARKET PULL INNOVATION

Market Pull is where the market is need of a product, so designers make a product to meet that need. The best example of this is cameras; they have evolved over the years to meet the changing needs of the user.The market needed to be able to take and store a large number of images and the size of the camera needed to be reduced. Due to this development in the design in cameras (making them lightweight, more compact, clearer resolution and so on) the editing software improved alongside. Over recent years they have developed to get even smaller, and have been put into mobile phones, then as people wants changed (people wanted to be able to take photos of themselves) the developed to be even smaller and then moved to the front of the phone. Other examples; hybrid cars, recyclable carrier bags, low light energy bulbs.