COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS ONE HUNDRED SECOND CONGRESS SECOND SESSION 61-932 WASHINGTON, DC, DECEMBER 4, 1992 Printed for the use of the Committee on Small Business Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402 ISBN 0-16-040026-0 STEVE JENNING, Subcommittee Staff Director JENIFER LOON, Minority Subcommittee Professional Staff Member CONTENTS Bloch, Erich, distinguished fellow, Council on Competitiveness.. Cummins, Michael, vice president, National Center for Manufacturing Sci- ences, on behalf of Edward A. Miller, president, accompanied by Connie Phillips, contract administrator. Eagleson, Jeffrey, director, Public Affairs, Lanxide Corp...... Happer, William, Science and Technology Advisor, U.S. Department of Narath, Albert, president, Sandia National Laboratories Happer, William, with attachment..... 198 Status of CRADA Approval Process by Field/Project office October IMPROVING TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER PRO GRAMS AT DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY LABORATORIES FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1992 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON REGULATION, BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES, AND ENERGY, The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:40 a.m., in room 2359-A, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ron Wyden (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Chairman WYDEN. The subcommittee will come to order. Today, the Subcommittee on Regulation, Business Opportunities, and Energy revisits an issue of great competitive importance to our technology-driven industries: Specifically, continuing roadblocks to the transfer of technical innovations from the Federal laboratory network to the private sector. This subcommittee began its inquiry into this matter nearly 4 years ago. Our initial survey of labs and their private industry customers found that getting these innovations from the laboratory bench to the manufacturing floor is difficult, expensive, and fraught with red tape. Quite simply, technology transfer is the process of getting new innovations into the hands of persons who need solutions to technical problems. In practice, however, the daunting experience of identifying and capturing suitable technologies from our 700 Federal laboratories seems geared to discourage rather than encourage these important joint ventures. In 1989, the subcommittee found that licensing revenues from all Federal research amounted to only $4 million. Based on total Federal research and development expenditures, this is a minuscule return of investment of .0005 percent. The subcommittee has been unable to document any significant improvement in this rather dismal figure since then. In 1992, technology-driven industries report that the situation may be marginally better thanks to streamlining certain systems and the heroic efforts of a few laboratory directors working against the grain of an executive branch that has been monumentally disinterested in this issue. In most cases, however, the vast majority of barriers that have been identified remain. The walls to technology transfer are high. Too often, they have the equivalent of regulatory broken bottles embedded at the top. This is a tragedy both for defense-oriented labs which are going to (1) |