Tuesday, February 7, 2012

 

Competition within government-sponsored R&D: An effective tool for innovation or a recipe for waste and duplication?
-Sybil Francis, Center for the Future of Arizona & Gregg Pascal Zachary, Arizona State University

 

About the Seminar

Is competition between and within government R&D agencies a force for innovation and for achieving desired outcomes? Or does competition lead to waste, duplication, and unproductive rivalry? The answer is: it depends. Competition can be a powerful tool leading to desired outcomes if the system of incentives and rewards is structured appropriately. Competition is ubiquitous within the Federal R&D enterprise, and should be examined systematically in order to identify and apply lessons for achieving R&D objectives more quickly and efficiently. Under what conditions might competition serve the greater good and under what conditions might competition serve primarily the interests of the agencies in question?

 

This presentation will draw on diverse examples of competition within and between government R&D agencies and private-sector R&D entities or that involve directed competition between government and private sector R&D actors. Brief case studies will be presented examining the impact of competition on technological innovation: between the Livermore and Los Alamos laboratories; among NIH, DOE, and Celera in mapping the human genome; and on NASA's compete-and-cooperate approach to Space-X.

About the Speakers

Sybil Francis' career as a public policy analyst/architect for the past 30 years has spanned a number of policy areas, including science, technology, national security, and education. She has worked in a number of settings to affect positive social outcomes, including the U.S. House of Representatives, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and in educational institutions and research laboratories. Francis earned her B.A. in Chemistry from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She began her career in science policy as a Legislative Assistant for Congressman George E. Brown, Jr. and learned through her work with him about the importance of outcomes based thinking in science and technology policy. She has become a practitioner informed by research and a scholar informed by practice.

 

G. Pascal ("Gregg") Zachary is a professor of practice at the Cronkite School and the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes. His four books include "The Diversity Advantage: Multicultural Identity in the New World Economy" (2003) and "Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century" (1997), which won the IEEE Literary Award and was described as "deeply informed" by the New York Times. His articles have appeared in many prominent magazines, including Foreign Policy, The New Republic, Wired, The Wilson Quarterly, Technology Review, Smart Money, Reason and Mother Jones. Zachary has written and directed several television documentaries, including "Code Rush," about innovation in Silicon Valley, for PBS. He also is regularly interviewed on world affairs by the BBC, Voice of America, Marketplace and other radio outlets. Zachary currently writes the "Scientific Estate" column for Spectrum magazine and contributes perspectives on African politics to The Atlantic.