exploring university-industry technology transfer of cad technology

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 43, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 1996 393 Exploring University-Industry Technology Transfer of CAD Technology Lucien P. Randazzese, Member, IEEE Abstract-Since its establishment in 1982, the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) has funded extensive silicon-based semiconductor research at universities, including research in the area of computer aided design. While the consortium has had success with transferring this research to its members, the overall incidence of transfer has been limited. This study explored the key issues affecting the transfer of university computer-aided design (CAD) technology from the SRC CAD Center at Carnegie Mellon University to the SRC’s industrial membership. Most research on improving technology transfer has focused on finding mechanisms to promote person-to-person interaction between developer and adopter. Interview and survey data collected from the 12 CAD Center faculty and 15 SRC member firm personnel suggest that transfer succeeds only when SRC member firms establish organi- zational incentives for technical personnel to commit their time to the implementation of university research, and when they provide these personnel the organizational resources needed to perform this implementation. Suggestions for improving the mechanisms of transfer are offered, but without reform in organizational incentives, improving these mechanisms is unlikely to significantly increase the rate at which university research is commercialized for actual industrial use. Index Terms- Technology transfer, computer aided design, consortia, university research, cooperative R&D, international competitiveness. I. INTRODUCTION LSI computer-aided design (CAD) research in U.S. uni- V versities leads the world, but when it comes to moving new ideas and techniques out of university research labora- tories and into the daily practice of industrial firms, it’s a different story. Indeed, even in the case of industry-sponsored university research consortia, there is concern that nonmember firms, including Japanese and other foreign firms, are often more effective at commercializing the products of university research than are some participating U.S. firms [121, [371. The problem may result from the incentive structures faced by faculty or the way U.S. university research laboratories are organized [5], [38], [47], or perhaps with the incentive structures faced by employees in U.S. high-tech firms (481. Whatever the nature of the problem, one thing seems certain: if the United States does not start to improve technology transfer and commercialization from academia, domestic industry is Manuhcript received March 16, 1995; revised Oclobei- 18, 1995. Review ot this manuscript was arranged hy Editor-in-Chief D. F. Kocaoglu. This work was supported by the SRC. The author is with The Center for Scicnce and International Affaira, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA. Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-939 1(96)05617-6. unlikely to enjoy the full comparative advantage in world markets that U.S. university research should be providing it. In an effort to identify the principal factors affecting university-industry technology transfer, an exploratory study was undertaken involving cooperation from the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and the SRC Computer Aided Design Center at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). The SRC is a consortium of North American merchant and captive semiconductor firms that supports university research in a variety of fields relating to the development, design, and manufacturing of semiconductor products. With an annual budget of about $3.5 million, the CMU CAD Center conducts research on a broad range of CAD applications for electronics design and manufacture, including device through functional level simulation, analog and digital system synthesis, layout and verification, IC process modeling, computer-aided testing and CAD framework development, and is in the self-sustained phase (phase seven) of the Geisler et al. model of university- industry research center development [25]. While the SRC has been instrumental in redirecting world-class university semiconductor research toward silicon-based applications of great benefit to U.S. industry 1271, the consensus among most participants is that there is room for improving the success with which SRC-supported university research gets transferred to industry. This exploratory study was informed by an extensive re- view of the technology transfer literature and examined the process of transfer at both the university and industry ends. While improvements in mechanisms for university-industry technology transfer are developed, the principal conclusion drawn from this study is that too much attention has been devoted on the part of both academic researchers and in- dustrial practitioners to looking for effective mechanisms of university-industry technology transfer. The primary determi- nant of transfer success appears to be the implementation by management of the organizational incentive structures needed to secure commitment to the implementation process on the part of those technical personnel actually responsible for these efforts. Following a brief review of the transfer literature, the research approach is described and the results are presented and analyzed. The paper concludes with general suggestions on how the process of university-industry technology transfer can be improved. 11. THE LITERATURE The literature relevant to technology transfer is quite exten- sive, covers a broad range of disciplines, and unfortunately. 0018-939 1/96$05.00 0 1996 IEEE

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Page 1: Exploring university-industry technology transfer of CAD technology

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 43, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 1996 393

Exploring University-Industry Technology Transfer of CAD Technology

Lucien P. Randazzese, Member, IEEE

Abstract-Since its establishment in 1982, the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) has funded extensive silicon-based semiconductor research at universities, including research in the area of computer aided design. While the consortium has had success with transferring this research to its members, the overall incidence of transfer has been limited. This study explored the key issues affecting the transfer of university computer-aided design (CAD) technology from the SRC CAD Center at Carnegie Mellon University to the SRC’s industrial membership. Most research on improving technology transfer has focused on finding mechanisms to promote person-to-person interaction between developer and adopter. Interview and survey data collected from the 12 CAD Center faculty and 15 SRC member firm personnel suggest that transfer succeeds only when SRC member firms establish organi- zational incentives for technical personnel to commit their time to the implementation of university research, and when they provide these personnel the organizational resources needed to perform this implementation. Suggestions for improving the mechanisms of transfer are offered, but without reform in organizational incentives, improving these mechanisms is unlikely to significantly increase the rate at which university research is commercialized for actual industrial use.

Index Terms- Technology transfer, computer aided design, consortia, university research, cooperative R&D, international competitiveness.

I. INTRODUCTION LSI computer-aided design (CAD) research in U.S. uni- V versities leads the world, but when it comes to moving

new ideas and techniques out of university research labora- tories and into the daily practice of industrial firms, it’s a different story. Indeed, even in the case of industry-sponsored university research consortia, there is concern that nonmember firms, including Japanese and other foreign firms, are often more effective at commercializing the products of university research than are some participating U.S. firms [121, [371. The problem may result from the incentive structures faced by faculty or the way U.S. university research laboratories are organized [5] , [38], [47], or perhaps with the incentive structures faced by employees in U.S. high-tech firms (481. Whatever the nature of the problem, one thing seems certain: if the United States does not start to improve technology transfer and commercialization from academia, domestic industry is

Manuhcript received March 16, 1995; revised Oclobei- 18, 1995. Review ot this manuscript was arranged hy Editor-in-Chief D. F. Kocaoglu. This work was supported by the SRC.

The author is with The Center for Scicnce and International Affaira, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA.

Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-939 1(96)05617-6.

unlikely to enjoy the full comparative advantage in world markets that U.S. university research should be providing it.

In an effort to identify the principal factors affecting university-industry technology transfer, an exploratory study was undertaken involving cooperation from the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and the SRC Computer Aided Design Center at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). The SRC is a consortium of North American merchant and captive semiconductor firms that supports university research in a variety of fields relating to the development, design, and manufacturing of semiconductor products. With an annual budget of about $3.5 million, the CMU CAD Center conducts research on a broad range of CAD applications for electronics design and manufacture, including device through functional level simulation, analog and digital system synthesis, layout and verification, IC process modeling, computer-aided testing and CAD framework development, and is in the self-sustained phase (phase seven) of the Geisler et al. model of university- industry research center development [25]. While the SRC has been instrumental in redirecting world-class university semiconductor research toward silicon-based applications of great benefit to U.S. industry 1271, the consensus among most participants is that there is room for improving the success with which SRC-supported university research gets transferred to industry.

This exploratory study was informed by an extensive re- view of the technology transfer literature and examined the process of transfer at both the university and industry ends. While improvements in mechanisms for university-industry technology transfer are developed, the principal conclusion drawn from this study is that too much attention has been devoted on the part of both academic researchers and in- dustrial practitioners to looking for effective mechanisms of university-industry technology transfer. The primary determi- nant of transfer success appears to be the implementation by management of the organizational incentive structures needed to secure commitment to the implementation process on the part of those technical personnel actually responsible for these efforts. Following a brief review of the transfer literature, the research approach is described and the results are presented and analyzed. The paper concludes with general suggestions on how the process of university-industry technology transfer can be improved.

11. THE LITERATURE

The literature relevant to technology transfer is quite exten- sive, covers a broad range of disciplines, and unfortunately.

0018-939 1/96$05.00 0 1996 IEEE

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394 lEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 43, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 1996

can too often be characterized as possessing a low signal-to- noise ratio. This section represents a brief presentation of the important features of the literature, focusing on university- industry technology transfer.

Economic studies of university research indicate that univer- sity scientific research impacts industry productivity after an average 20-year lag [I], while university engineering research exhibits a seven [39] to ten [1] year lag. Direct industry funding of university research results increase in-house in- dustry funding of R&D with a five year lag 171, suggesting that cooperation speeds up the transfer process. These effects are geographically mediated [31], 1481, and the importance of university research varies widely across industries [35], 1461, with radical breakthroughs in industry more likely to originate at universities than minor innovations 1251. In some industries such as biotechnology, industry-funded university research accounts for a significant fraction of industry’s innovations [SI. While much of American industry increasingly sees academic research as a strategically valuable yet underutilized source of research [61], many firms clearly treat their support of uni- versity research as philanthropy [30]. When firms are serious about their support of academic research, they stand to benefit from it in at least three ways: students as future personnel [23], [43], tangible outputs such as patents, prototype products, and tools [14], [411, and intermediate outcomes that are often hard to measure yet quite beneficial to industry, either as inputs to their own R&D activities 111, [14], [20], [29], or as a windows on future developments in different technical fields [4], [6], [4.5]. Tangible outputs, except in fields such as biotechnology [8], are rare [29].

Intermediate outcomes are much more common, but are almost never ready for immediate commercial application. They usually arrive in the form of new ideas on paper or new products or procedures that are somewhat jerrybuilt, operate only on a small scale, and are not very robust. These outcomes develop into commercial products or processes only after they are transferred to industry for development. It is this development issue that is the most problematic for university-industry technology transfer (in addition to oft- cited intellectual property issues). The amount of internal resources required to assimilate external research, including that of universities, is typically substantial [26], 1481, [60], [61]. These costs, combined with continued concern over U.S. competitiveness, have lead to a debate within the policy com- munity as to whether university research should be directed more toward the applied needs of industry [16], [21], [27], [34], 1.531. While somewhat of a consensus has emerged that affirms the primarily responsibility of industry for developing university ideas into commercial products and processes [ 161, [21], 1261, 1361, [S3], [631, the desire to improve transfer has lead to an enormous body of transfer research [2] , [lo], [15], 1171, [421, 1441, [48], [Sl], [561-[581, including that directed specifically at university-industry technology transfer [ 5 ] , [9], [ls], [26], [41], [64] as well as at CAD technology adoption

This transfer research stresses the importance of the human (versus paper) interaction needed to transfer technological information [2], C1.51, [301, [33], [421, [48], [521 and searches

~551.

vigorously for mechanisms to facilitate greater interaction between external developers and internal adopters [SI, [IS], [17], [40], [42], [45], [54], [%I, [56]. While it also highlights the need for a strong receiving-institution champion to commit organizational resources to the transfer effort [3], [ 5 ] , [ l 11, [26], it has only to a lesser extent and more recently focused on policies directed at the creation of incentives for these personnel to commit their time and energy to the imple- mentation of external research [421, C481, [S61, [571, [61]. Focus on mechanisms for encouraging human interaction will undoubtedly accelerate the rate at which industry becomes aware of the university technology that is right for and applicable to its problems and needs; it is not yet clear whether it will improve the rate at which this university technology is actually put to use. At some point in the transfer process, resources must be available, or be made available, and the proces? must become politically viable within the firm and find well-timed support among those with sufficient organizational authority [SO]. The research described in the following sections is an attempt to evaluate the overall process of university- industry technology transfer with attention to the roles of both the mechanisms of transfer and receiving-institution incentive structure and resource availability issues.

111. METHODOLOGY

After reviewing the literature on technology transfer, a preliminary set of interviews were conducted with the CAD Center directorship and selected industry personnel. Based on this background information, protocols for structured inter- views and surveys of the CAD Center faculty and selected SRC member company personnel were developed. During the last six months of 1992, all 12 of the CAD Center faculty were interviewed, as were 15 industry personnel, including four managers. CAD Center archival data were used to generate preliminary assessments of the research and transfer experiences of each faculty member. The faculty were asked to provide a detailed verbal history of one to three notable transfer experiences with their research. An approx- imately equal number of successful and unsuccessful transfer experiences was sought and obtained. Once the interviewee had described these transfer histories, structured questions regarding more general issues relating to technology transfer were asked. Finally, a written survey was left with each faculty member to complete on his own.

A similar protocol was used for the industry personnel. Industry interviewees were selected primarily on the basis of the specific faculty transfer experiences, although some industry personnel interviewed had had no direct transfer experience with CAD Center technology. All the industry personnel interviewed did have experience in transferring research from university environments.

The interview procedures generated an enormous amount of data. In order to analyze these data, they were organized into nine general categories relating to:

1) industry motives for funding the CAD Center; 2) industry’s capacity to do the research itself;

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RANDAZZESE: EXPLORING UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OF CAD TECHNOLOGY

-

395

University

. . . . . .)

Industry

Spin-off company Commercialization

Indicates potential purchase of spin-off company

Fig. 1. The three-stage university-industry technology transfer process model

3) transfer mechanisms for initial industry awareness of

4) transfer mechanisms for industry experimentation of

5 ) faculty motives for engaging in technology transfer; 6) the role of graduate students in research and transfer; 7) the role of industry personnel in research and transfer; 8) the risks to industry in undertaking transfer; 9) issues specific to the transfer of CAD technology.

new research developments;

new research developments;

These nine general categories were further divided into 52 subcategories, 32 of which were binary response categories, and 20 of which were open-ended. For example, category three, transfer mechanisms for initial industry awareness of new research developments, included “SRC research reviews” as a binary response subcategory; category seven, the role of industry personnel in research and transfer, included “The role of senior management” as an open-ended subcategory.

Each CMU and industry interview was coded according to these categories, recording the frequency with which each topic was mentioned. Multiple mentions of a single binary response issue by a single respondent were recorded only once unless they pertained to different transfer histories. Comments that related to more than one open-ended issue were recorded for all categories to which they were relevant. Interview tran- scripts were coded by two coders with an interrater reliability of 97% for matters of fact and 94% when interpreting sub- jective comments. The interview material was supplemented by results from the faculty surveys. The faculty response rate

for the survey was 58% (seven of 12), a reasonable figure for research of this kind, although the absolute number of respondents is low. Industry personnel were less willing to provide written survey responses and so the limited amount of industry survey data collected was not analyzed. In order to place the CAD Center experience within a broader context of transfer from engineering-based university-industry research centers (UIRC’s), directors at three additional centers at CMU were interviewed; the Engineering Design Research Center (EDRC), the Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC), and the Robotics Institute (RI).

I v . RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In order to better analyze the considerable amount of data collected through the interviews and surveys, a conceptual three-stage model of the process of university-industry tech- nology transfer was developed. Stage one involves building original industrial awareness of useful university research results, stage two involves industry experimentation with this research, and stage three involves industry implementation of the research. Commercialization of university research in an actual product or its use in actual manufacturing or design processes is considered to represent successful completion of stage three (implementation), and thus the entire transfer process. At each stage of the technology transfer process there are multiple feedback paths to and from other stages in the process and between the various organizations involved. These feedback paths and interactions are illustrated in Fig. 1, which

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396 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 43, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 1996

Awareness Mechanism Frequency of Mention (Faculty)

Refereed Literature 4 SRC Technical Reports 2 SRC Newsletter 0 Conferences 6 Professional Networks 11 Faculty Visits 6 Formal CAD Center 6

Reviews

Frequency of Mention (Industry Personnel)

0 1 3 1 4 2 6

shows that in addition to universities and user firms, university- originating spin-off firms and commercial electronic design automation (EDA) CAD suppliers can also play a role in technology transfer.’ In the following discussion, each of the three stages of the transfer process is analyzed in light of the data collected and lessons from the literature. Of particular value here were the interviews with CAD Center faculty and with the personnel of its industrial affiliates. It is important to note that CAD Center affiliates benefited in some way from university research in almost all cases in which they progressed as far as experimenting with CAD Center research (stage two). These benefits came in the form of intermediate research outcomes that improved industry’s internal R&D activities, signaling information regarding likely future developments in various CAD fields and opportunities for industrial personnel to improve their own research skills.

A. Initial Industry Awareness of University Research

Table I reports data drawn from the interviews, on a variety of mechanisms by which industry first became aware of CAD Center research. Note that the faculty enjoy a large number of possible adopters for their CAD research, and thus could describe the manner in which many different firms developed an awareness for this research. On the other hand, industry personnel could discuss only the single cases of transfer they had been involved with in their firm, thus the numbers in column two of Table I sum to only 15. Table I is clearly reminiscent of the suggestion in the literature that paper mechanisms are much less effective at generating awareness in industry than are face-to-face mechanisms.

Although three of the four face-to-face mechanisms (con-

0.00 6.00 12.00 18.00 24.00 30.00 36.00

Fig. 2. awareness of CAD Center research results.

Faculty estimation of the time in months required for industry

they were less so. Only two faculty and one industry member cited SRC technical reports as the means by which industry became aware of CAD Center developments. In fact, three industry personnel as well as one of the faculty considered the technical reports completely ineffectual. Because of their large quantity and often diminished substantive content, it is difficult for those reports that could be valuable to specific industry personnel to always reach their target.

As with many technical disciplines, public conferences, and smaller scale direct faculty (and graduate student) visits to industry are an important part of academic research activity, and thus provide a natural forum for research communication to industry. A number of instances were identified in which formal research ties between CAD Center faculty and various SRC member firms have been initiated as a result of visits made by faculty and graduate students, most of which were arranged through the faculties’ professional networks or at annual reviews. Because of obvious time constraints, faculty and graduate students can attend and visit only a limited number of conferences and companies, limiting the exposure of their research to industry personnel.

Despite the overall effectiveness of annual reviews in keep- ing industry apprised of CAD Center research, there remains room for improvement. The DSSC has developed an adap- tation to the standard review procedure that has lead to significantly increased industry awareness of that center’s research. The first day of the review follows the traditional format during which faculty survey the center’s research ac- tivities. This is followed by a second day during which review participants separate into subdiscipline workshops co-chaired by one faculty member who describes the research agenda and one industry representative who outlines requirements for easy transfer. This new co-chaired workshop format has raised the participation of one DSSC affiliate from one representative to * A

ferences, professional networks, and faculty visits) are not directly related to the SRC, the survey data indicate that the consortium’s members have a clear advantage in staying on top of CAD Center research. According to the faculty survey data, it takes an average of only 15.3 months for awareness of new CAD Center developments to reach the SRC membership, compared to 29.6 months for the industry as a whole (see Fig. 2). This striking difference is due, at least in part, to SRC support of the transfer process via technical reports, newslet- ters, and research reviews. While both university researchers and industry personnel were enthusiastic about the capacity for awareness-building through reviews, for SRC publications

B. Industrial Exi,erij?zentation

Once industry is aware of potentially useful university research, it must begin to experiment with that research in order to better understand it. Experimentation is important because university CAD research often arrives in industry in the form of graduate student developed software that is not very well engineered, somewhat oversold, and untested on industrial scale problems. As with awareness building, there are a variety of mechanisms for experimentation. Fig. 3 presents faculty survey data on mechanism effectiveness and

universi0 R~~~~~~~-

’ The type of CAD used in electronic engineering applicationa is referred to as electronic design automation or EDA CAD. The EDA industry i s made up of a number of small firms and two principal mainstream suppliers, Cadence

frequency of occurrence for a variety of technology transfer mechanisms. The did not generally consider simp1e

Design Systems Incorporated and the Mentor Graphics Corporation. awareness-building part of technology transfer, and thus in

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391 RANDAZZESE: EXPLORING UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OF CAD TECHNOLOGY

Research Reviews

ResearcMSoftware Documentation

Short-Term Industry Visits to UlRC

Technical Journals

Workshops and Conferences

Ph D. Graduates

M.S. Graduates

Student Internships

Long-term Faculty Visits to Industry

Professional Contacts and Consulting

loint Research Projects

Long-Term Industry Visits to UlRC I. I ,

~

0 0 0 I 0 0 200 3 0 0 4 0 0 5 0 0 6 0 0

- 1 j 0 Relative Frequency of Use or Association 1 Relative Effectiveness in Transfer

Fig. 3. quency of occurrence.

Faculty estimations of transfer mechanism effectiveness and fre-

discussing the results reported in Fig. 3 it will be assumed that the data refer to stage two of the technology transfer process. Two things are strikingly clear from Fig. 3; the most effective mechanisms are those that involve the highest degree of human interaction and the most effective transfer mechanisms are also the least used.

Research reviews, although good vehicles for awareness building, do not provide much of a means by which industry participants can perform hands-on experimentation with the research, at least not in a controlled environment in which the university ideas can be tested within the context of industry’s ongoing internal CAD R&D and use. Technical paperwork that industry participants take back with them from reviews, as suggested by the literature, appears to do little to encourage industry experimentation following their visits to the CAD Center.

In addition to centerwide reviews, eight of the 12 CAD Cen- ter faculty members discussed offering special workshops for industry personnel as a mechanisms by which these personnel could acquire technical details on CAD Center research results. These workshops included four SRC-sponsored technology transfer classes (TTC’s) held at the Center. TTC’s are run at the SRC’s request when sufficient industry interest in a specific university research project is generated. All of the faculty who discussed these SRC transfer courses cited a minimal amount of industry follow-up work. As with reviews and visits, it is often the case that the right people in industry do not participate in the classes. In addition, they consume very large amounts of faculty and especially graduate student time. Four faculty reported preparing workshops on their research for industry delivered at industry sites, and all of these appear to have been very successful in getting industry to genuinely work with the research, in at least one case leading to complete industry adoption of the university technology and its extensive use in actual design. This improved success likely

resulted because it was industry that provided the principal impetus behind these other courses, not the SRC.

As the literature suggests, one of the best ways to transfer technology is to transfer the people associated with it [ 191. This people transfer is most frequently achieved for the CAD Center, at least in the short-run, when faculty consult at SRC member firm sites. Consulting represents a stage- two procedure that is uniformly considered highly effective by faculty and industry personnel (see Fig. 3). Interestingly, less frequent long-term faculty appointments to industry sites do not appear to be much more effective than short-term visits. Also effective at achieving this interaction are student internships and of course, graduates [311. As with short- term awareness-building visits to industry, the number of firms at which students can intern over the course of their graduate education is minimal, limiting the number of industry personnel that can benefit from their help with developing substantial technical knowledge of CAD Center research.

Joint research projects involving equal participation of in- dustry and university researchers, and long-term industry per- sonnel assignments to the CAD Center were clearly judged the most effective means by which industry can acquire details on university research. In both cases industry contributes in a sig- nificant way to the research. However, as Fig. 3 suggests, these efforts are relatively rare. This sort of interaction demands a high level of commitment and resources, especially human resources from industry. For long-term industry assignees to the CAD Center in particular, the trade-off is acute. The benefit a firm derives from such an assignment is proportional to the capabilities of the persons it sends, but in order to send talented personnel, a firm must take them off important in-house projects.

Though not reported in Fig. 3, a stage-two mechanism involving undergraduates merits attention. In the summer of 1990, six CMU electrical and computer engineering under- graduates who had completed their sophomore year studies spent two weeks at CMU training on one of the faculty’s developmental simulation CAD tools. Following this, they spent two weeks at ten different SRC member firm sites under SRC sponsorship installing and benchmarking the tool (one or two students visited each firm). Interviews with those involved with or knowledgeable of the undergraduate field application engineer (UFAE) experiment suggest that receiving firms experimented with the CAD Center software a great deal more than they would have had they simply attended a TTC at CMU or received the software. In addition, the UFAE’s continued to work with the CAD Center research team, helping them develop ties to the industry contacts experimenting with the software. Thus a great dear of sender-receiver interaction was achieved without consuming too much faculty or graduate student time.

C. Industrial Implementation of University Research

As of the end of 1992, nine instances of actual use in production of CAD Center technology were identified 131.’

’All the data presented in the paper are current as of late 1992. Given the continued maturation of CAD Center research, it likely that greater levels of transfer have been achieved since then.

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398 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 43, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 1996

Three of these nine successful stage-three implementations were by foreign companies, and one via commercialization by an EDA vendor. Because of their non-SRC member status, these latter four firms typically received information on the university research later than their domestic competitors, often had little or no access to CAD Center faculty, had to work almost exclusively from the referred literature and some faced additional barriers associated with transoceanic technology transfer. And yet, these companies were able to incorporate CAD Center research into their ongoing design and production processes because they recognized both the potential of the university research and the need to apply significant intemal resources to its implementation. It appears that beyond some modest threshold level of knowledge about the research results, for example that which is available from refereed literature, successful technology transfer of those results is ultimately dependent not on the transfer mechanisms implemented to foster human interaction between developer and adopter, but on the transfer efforts of the adopter.

By adopter efforts is meant the efforts of front-line tech- nical personnel in receiving firms that actually experiment with, adapt, and implement the research. Over the last two decades, as a mainstream EDA CAD supplier industry has developed, internal CAD development groups within domestic semiconductor and electronics system firms have shrunk dra- matically. Instead of groundbreaking research into new CAD techniques, these internal CAD groups now concentrate on maintaining and incrementally improving existing CAD sys- tems, occasionally augmenting vendor supplied CAD systems with proprietary internal tools. This evolution has shifted the nature of the incentives faced by, and therefore the objectives of industry CAD personnel. The official job task of most of these personnel is to maintain the current CAD systems being applied to the design of next generation products; they simply do not have time to monitor, much less internalize university research. This is especially true given the nature of most university CAD software and the level of attention required to industry-harden it.

Almost all the faculty and many industry personnel indi- cated that many industry SRC mentors, intended to be a key vehicle by which industry absorbs SRC-supported technol- ogy, are assigned to university research projects somewhat arbitrarily and to projects that do not bear directly on their official job task. These mentors have official job tasks within their organizations upon which they are evaluated that do not typically include the job of transferring university research. Under such circumstances stage-three transfer activities are left to those rare and less risk-avers boundary spanners in firms, and are therefore infrequent [31, [52]. Only one of the five instances in which CAD Center research was successfully transferred directly by SRC member firms involved an SRC mentor. Mentors were assigned to the other four CAD Center research projects, but it was personnel at other member firms, or in the case of one project, a CAD Center graduating Ph.D. student that transferred the research. In all five of these cases, the task of adapting, integrating, and implementing university research was made the official organizational task of the personnel responsible for this transfer. These personnel

were provided the time (usually 100% of his job time as well support from other personnel), organizational resources, and organizational authority required to complete the job of transfer. These five transfers required between one half and ten person-years of effort, with 2.5 person-years being typical. By comparison, at the EDRC, an average of six person-years of internal effort is required by EDRC affiliates, most of whom are SRC members, to implement EDRC research in industrial applications. Overall, the successful cases of transfer strongly suggest that it is the effort and commitment of industry adopters that ultimately determine success.

This conclusion is reinforced when unsuccessful attempts at stage-three implementation are examined. Four cases were identified in which significant in-house efforts were unsuc- cessfully made to implement university research for internal use. For only one of these was the effort terminated because the university research turned out to be the “wrong” research. In the other three cases, the efforts were terminate because of corporate reorganizations that came after the firms had spent an average of two person-years adapting the CAD Center research to their internal operations. In all three cases, the firms were close to completing implementation. The following faculty quote is illustrative.

We did have an internal champion fairly high up. But this was a very long process and unfortunately in this eco- nomic climate when the process is long, reorganizations come along and it is hard to maintain resources.

Clearly when failure modes such as these predominate, it is not the mechanisms of technology transfer that are the problem; nor is effort directed at finding better mechanisms for transfer likely to improve the situation much.

Joint research projects and long-term assignments of indus- try personnel to the CAD Center represent excellent arrange- ments for fostering the internal organizational commitment required for transfer. Both the faculty and industry believe these mechanisms to be the most effective procedures for facilitating the implementation of CAD Center research. These mechanism are also the least frequently used, however (recall Fig. 3), and again, faculty and industry personnel were fairly concordant as to why: these arrangements require substantial and thus costly firm commitment of resources and people. Ideally, industry would like to be able to use university technology without having to commit significant organizations resources to the transfer process. As Fig. 1 indicates, imple- mentation can take place via adoption by an existing EDA CAD vendor firm, or the formation of a startup company around a maturing university CAD research project [28]. These CAD firms apply the effort to modifying and hardening the university CAD technology and software, often incorporating it into their existing CAD systems. Three startup companies have been formed from recent CAD Center research, and one instance of adoption by an existing EDA vendor was identified. Although industry personnel (including managers) clearly wish to see more EDA industry commercialization given the substantial attendant reduction in adoption effort, third-party CAD software firms are free to sell their prod- ucts to non-SRC and foreign firms, thus jeopardizing much

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RANDAZZESE: EXPLORING UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OF CAD TECHNOLOGY 399

Longer Term-Shorter Term

More Applied More Basic

More Specific

Higher Trialability

More General

More Incremental More Radical

i---------I I

-3.00 -2.00 - 1 .oo 0.00 1 .oo 2.00 3.00

lndustly Preference 0 Industry Perception

Fig. 4. research.

Faculty evaluations of industry attitudes regarding CAD Center

of the original benefit of the cooperatively sponsored SRC research.

The general aversion on the part of industry to apply serious adoption effort is evidenced by the data of Fig. 4. These faculty survey data consist of the CAD Center faculty’s views of affiliates’ preferences regarding center research and the faculty’s views of affiliates’ perception of this research. According to the faculty, industry would like research that is much shorter term, more applied, geared toward more specific applications, and capable of being tried out on a smaller scale. In other words, industry wants research from the CAD Center that they do not have to apply considerable internal resources toward in order to transfer. These preferences often lead to implementation work by CAD Center graduate students [63], which can jeopardize their education [26] and leave firms in a quandary when students graduate and begin work for competitors.

One instance of differing perspectives between faculty and industry personnel concerned the faculty’s occasional lack of attention to standard industry practice when initiating new research projects. As stated above, faculty should not be expected to develop their research to a point where it is applicable to industrial scale problems, however, industry personnel occasionally argued that faculty spend time on CAD research that could never have application in an industrial setting. While this view may in part result from industry’s truncated time horizon, when faculty are interested in technol- ogy transfer, their research may benefit from greater attention to current industry practice. As it turns out, the faculty survey data indicate that faculty are indeed interested in technology transfer, spending an average of 27% of their time on early stage transfer activities. The data reported in Fig. 2 indicate that faculty and graduate student technology transfer activities, supported by the SRC’s transfer mechanisms (e.& publi- cations, workshops, courses) provide the SRC membership a very clear advantage in transfer over non-SRC members. It is also very clear, however, that non-SRC members can successfully transfer SRC-supported university research results in the absence of this advantage.

The work of Cohen and Levinthal [ 141 suggests that a firm’s ability to exploit externally generated technical knowledge, what they refer to as a firm’s “absorptive capacity,” is based on firm decisions regarding internal R&D spending in relevant

technical areas, as well as directed investments in specific external technologies such as those available from univer- sities. Although SRC member-focused technology transfer activities by the CAD Center researchers constitute a quasi- public good that only the consortium’s members benefit from, SRC research results should be expected to wind up in the hands of nonmembers sooner or later. There is little that can be done about this unless severe restrictions are placed on the academics’ ability to disclose and publish their research results. Indeed, the poorly appropriable generic nature of the SRC research that justifies cooperation in the first place also makes that research highly “leaky” [49]. Through exploiting their own absorptive capacity, however, SRC members can take aggressive advantage of their early access to these results, their privileged access to the university researchers and the advantage they have in helping shape the research agenda. The evidence presented above suggests that in order to do this, they must make directed organizational commitments of resources toward monitoring and adapting external research results as well as general investments in R&D [14]. This is especially true since SRC research is meant to address those areas where internal industry research has been inadequate [59]. Consider for comparison the RI transfer experience. It is not unusual for an RI affiliate to fund a project at a level of $1 million, compared to the $50-100 000 that is typical for CAD Center projects. When the RI’s industrial affiliates, most of which are SRC members, make such large financial commitments to university research, the internal incentives for transfer follow naturally. Affiliates typically commit a level of resources ten times their contribution to the university research project in order to transfer, implement, and support this technology intemally.

V. RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

The above analysis suggests that two distinct types of processes are involved in getting university CAD research successfully transferred and applied to industry application. The early stages of the transfer process involve establishing industry awareness of university research and developing a more substantial, technical, industry appreciation of the poten- tial of this research for addressing industrial CAD needs. These early stages appear to be highly dependent on a stochastic process that determines when and which industry personnel in which SRC member firms find out about and experiment with what university research, similar to the findings of 1621. It is through the operation of formal technology transfer mechanisms, in addition to informal professional networks, that initial university-industry linkages are first established, and thus it is during these early stages that efforts to improve transfer mechanisms will have the greatest impact. The last stage of the transfer process, on the other hand, that for which university research is adapted for actual commercial application, only succeeds through structured, managed, and usually costly activities by adopters.

The multiple paths to achieving initial industry aware- ness are essentially parallel impedances-as many as possible should be exploited so as to maximize the flow of awareness to

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as many industry personnel in as many SRC member firms as possible. A number of steps can be taken to assist this process. Given the concems of industry about technical reports, UIRC’s may wish to consider reducing the number of technical reports they issue and increasing their substantive content. To better focus the reviews, centers should investigate doing annual research reviews by discipline, either within a single school, or across several schools within the same region, and should definitely experiment with the innovative DSSC model for reviews. More generally, the faculty should not underestimate the their need to aggressively communicate their research results to industry.

The paths for stage-two transfer are not as numerous as those available for awareness building, but there are oppor- tunities here to lower transfer impedance through increasing the odds that industry personnel explore the right university research projects. One clear way to increase the amount of industry experimentation with UIRC research that does not require a lot of faculty or graduate student time is via UFAE’s. Given its initial success at CMU, the UFAE program should be tried with other mature university research projects. Use of UFAE’s can be combined with UIRC technology transfer classes held at centers to improve industry follow-up. One thing that i s sure to increase industry experimentation with university research, at least with the CAD Center at CMU and probably with other UIRC’s as well, is improved mentoring. This improvement is primarily the task of industry management, of course. A little more effort on the part of industry to identify appropriate mentors for CAD Center research projects may go a long way to increase the effort these mentors put into exploring university research. Face- to-face meetings between mentors and faculty researchers at the beginning of each SRC project would also improve the mentoring process. These start-up meetings could be used to prevent faculty interested in transfer from pursuing research approaches that would not fit well with current industry practice, as well as to develop systematic plans for technology transfer over the course of a research project, the benefits of which have been suggested by the literature [17], [42], as well the experience of other CMU university research centers.

While these suggestions for improving the mechanisms of university-industry technology transfer will surely bolster the transfer process, they are likely to do so only for firms interested in intermediate research results, access to a win- dow on future CAD developments or well-trained students. According to the results of this exploratory study, research directed at improving the rate at which firms actually apply university research to commercial products and processes should focus not on traditional notions of transfer mechanisms, but on developing means by which management can more easily commit the requisite resources to adoption. Attention to mechanisms will do little, other than perhaps increasing the number of university projects that make it to the later stages of transfer. Industry must realize both the substantial cost and occasional risks associated with adoption, and learn to accept the inherent trade-off between these transfer activities and the strain they may produce for everyday operations. More specifically, industry must provide the incentive structures for

technical personnel that lead them to apply themselves in a systematic, directed, and full-time fashion to the adoption and implementation process. The scarcity of quick fixes to the challenge of technology transfer, though recognized by many practitioners, represents an important aspect of the overall transfer process that has yet to receive the research attention it merits.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author gratefully acknowledges assistance with the research design and data evaluation from Prof. G. Morgan

the helpful comments of three anonymous referees.

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Lucien P. Randazzese (M’96) received the B.S. degree in microelectronic engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, in 1991. In 1995 he received the Ph.D. degree in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. His Ph.D. dissertation is an analysis of the activity and performance of university-industry research centers in the United States.

He is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard

University, Cmabridge, MA. He briefly worked for the IBM Corporation in Bnrlington, VT, participating in a number of advanced DRAM research and developmcnt projects. He is co-authoring (with W. Cohen and R. Florida) Far Knowledge and Profit: University-Industry Reseurch Centers in the United States, to be published. His research interests are in R&D management and strategy, cooperative R&D alliances, technology transfer, university-industry rcscarch relationships and science and technology policy.

Dr. Randazzese is a member of the Academy of Management and the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management.