The Evolution of Industrial R&D and
Physics based Technology Transfer in the US since World War II
报 告 人：Ph.D Orville R. Butler
The Associate Historian in American Institute of Physics
报告时间：2010年11月2日（周二）上午9：30-11：30
报告地点： 209会议室
报告简介：
For about thirty years after World War II American Corporation build centralized R&D Centers, hired the best and brightest scientists they could get and, with minimal constraints encouraged them to do research. These central laboratories were funded by the Corporation through a levy on its operating divisions. The many important discoveries made Bell Labs, IBM labs, RCA labs, Xerox PARC and other centralized corporate R&D centers were then “tossed over the wall” for the operating divisions to use. The last major centralized laboratory in the US was Xerox PARC established in 1970 (Though some might argue that Microsoft’s R&D Center founded by Nathan Myhrvold in the late 1980s remains an exception). By the 1980s, however research in the central R&D labs began to transition from a focus on research to a focus on Development as many of the labs were renamed “Technology Centers.” Rather than doing research to create “new knowledge” technology centers focused on surveying new knowledge created elsewhere for possible acquisition and development within the corporation. Of course much fundamental research remained within universities and government laboratories and because of the Bayh-Dole act of 1980 universities were encouraged to commercialize their intellectual property. As a result the marketplace became a source for commoditized new knowledge, or innovation, where that new knowledge might come from research, but corporations would acquire new knowledge or new arrangements of knowledge and transform them into products related to their core business. The discovery of new knowledge might happen anywhere, but often its transmission into a marketable commodity took place in entrepreneurial startups. The role of research in these startups varies greatly and do a large degree appears to be correlated to the funding models for these startups. Our preliminary research into how physicist entrepreneurs fund their startups has thus far identified four funding models each with a different pattern of R&D. Our discussion of these transitions is based on about 120 interviews of physicists at 15 of the top 25 employers of physicists and provisional results from our ongoing interviews with (currently more than 50) physicist entrepreneurs.
报告人简介：
Orville R. Butler博士1993年毕业于美国爱荷华州立大学，并获得天体物理学史的博士学位。现在是美国物理学研究所的专家，专注于基于企业家的产业R&D研究。
报告语言：英语
主持人兼评议人：方在庆 研究员
联系人：范 勇 电话：010-57552525 邮件：kyc@ihns.ac.cn
