Evaluating Government Technology Transfer: Early Impacts of the “Cooperative Technology Paradigm”

The national laboratories are a reservoir of scientific and technological talent that can help America to compete in international markets.… Spurred in the past decade by new legislation and enlightened policies, the national laboratories have greatly expanded efforts to transfer federally‐funded inventions and technology to private industry. Alan Schriesheim (Director, Argonne National Laboratory), “Toward a Golden Age for Technology Transfer,” Issues in Science and Technology, Winter, 1990–91, p. 52. Although Congress adopted several laws in the 1980s to encourage the commercialization of federal laboratory technology and to promote technology transfer from the federal laboratories to the private sector, collaboration between laboratories and industrial firms has been modest at best. Erich Bloch, Toward A U.S. Technology Strategy, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, February, 1991, p. 22.