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In the preceding sections, we have looked at some of the principal outcomes and benefits derived by companies from their participation in an ERC. In this section, we will examine some of the factors that may help explain variations in outcomes and benefits across companies and across ERCs.

Factors that Contribute to ERC-Derived Benefits

In the view of company representatives, one of the most important factors underlying the degree to which a company benefits from its relationship with an ERC is the closeness between the specific technical focus of the ERC and that of the company unit that is involved (see Table 18). More than a fourth of all respondents (25.9%) rated this factor as extremely important in contributing to ERC-derived benefits and an additional third (32.4) rated it as very important. (The match between the research focus of the ERC and the interests of the company was also a very important factor in the original decision by firms to participate.) Other factors rated as either extremely important or very important by close to half of all respondents include the responsiveness of ERC faculty/researchers to company needs (49.2%), and efforts by the ERC to communicate and stay in contact with participants (48.1%).

Somewhat above the midpoint of 3.0 in the mean ratings of how company representatives perceived the importance of various factors in contributing to positive outcomes from their relationships with an ERC were the continuous existence of a strong ERC "champion" within the company unit, which 43.1% of respondents rated as extremely or very important; the receptivity of company technical staff to ERC ideas and/or results, with 41.7% of respondents rating it as extremely or very important; and management support of the ERC within the company, with 38.1%. It is interesting to note that all three of these factors have to do with the company's role in the ERC interaction rather than anything on the part of the ERC itself.

Relatively unimportant in respondents' views of the factors underlying benefits they derived from their relationships with an ERC were their geographic proximity to the ERC, their ability to establish proprietary rights, or the commercialization potential of ERC research; only about a fifth of respondents considered these factors very or extremely important.

Companies also viewed as relatively unimportant that students become familiar with an engineering systems approach at an ERC, despite the program's objective of integrating research and education via the systems perspective of a Center's research program. Just under a fourth of respondents (24.5%) rated this as very important or extremely important, while close to a third (32.7%) of respondents rated this as not applicable/not important. The mean rating was 2.6. 

Respondents considered the ERC's emphasis on cross-disciplinary research, another NSF objective of the program, a bit more important than they did the integration of the engineering systems approach into the educational process. Just above a third (35.1%) thought that the ERC's emphasis on cross-disciplinary research was a very important or extremely important factor underlying benefits derived from the ERC, while about a fifth (20.2%) rated it as not applicable/not important. The mean rating was 3.0.

In terms of the importance of the cross-disciplinary approach to research, the survey response is somewhat at odds with what we were told by several individuals in the follow-on telephone interviews conducted as part of this study. One interviewee said in no uncertain terms, "Make sure that you get across the point that the difference is that universities must be cross-disciplinary. It forces professors to collaborate with their peers; as a result, students have that broader perspective. Cross-disciplinary knowledge is so valuable, and so hard to get in industry." Another said, "We thought we'd end up with results related to a specific problem. The offshoots we got are unexpected bonuses. To be honest, they've gone a lot further in the field than you would expect. Unlike some academics, they don't spend time pursuing pet projects. Also unusual was the integration of different disciplines, something you don't normally see at a university. Their advisory council has many prominent people on it, and it helped them steer in that direction." Yet another said, "Most software companies only do software, experimental companies only do experiments, but the ERC develops and validates both. You don't normally see this together. Another item is the number of disciplines they are able to draw together. This is not typical, it's very rare. They were able to draw them together and act in a coordinated fashion." Other comments included: "Multidisciplinary research at the ERC benefited several groups in our department: the analytical group, pilot plant people, and computational researchers"; "A unique factor of the ERC was the concomitant interests of two fields. The willingness to work together is unusual"; "Centers are unique in the focus of a variety of faculty on common, interdisciplinary technology....At the Center, researchers from electrical engineering, materials science, and chemistry all focus on the same problem, but from different angles. That's one of the key things".

Barriers to Benefiting from the ERC Relationship

In general, companies did not perceive there to be any particularly strong barriers to their benefiting from their relationships with an ERC (see Table 19). When asked to rate certain types of barriers on a scale of 1 to 4 from "not a barrier/doesn't apply" to "major barrier", the mean rating for all potential barriers listed fell below the midpoint of 2.5. Chief among what companies did perceive as a barrier was other company matters preempting involvement with the ERC; 21.1% of respondents considered this a major barrier and another 23.7% a moderate barrier, or 44.8% combined as either a moderate or major barrier. Other areas which a third or more of respondents considered moderate or major barriers included differences in values, mission, or priorities between the ERC and the company (e.g., academia versus corporate values), (41.2%); different conceptions of time between project initiation and completion (35.8%); lack of awareness about the ERC within the company (34.5%); and intellectual property issues (33.8%).

Very few industry sponsors of the ERCs thought that either a low commercialization potential of the ERC's research or that the ERC's research was not sufficiently applied constituted major barriers to their companies' benefiting from the ERC relationship -- 7.2% and 5.7%, respectively. An additional 12.4% saw low commercialization potential as a moderate barrier and an additional 17.5% saw the research as insufficiently applied as a moderate barrier. 

The follow-on telephone interviews conducted as part of this study tended to reinforce the finding that the barriers to deriving benefits from participation in an ERC often reflect internal company constraints or changing company priorities rather than any shortcomings on the part of the ERC. One ERC industry sponsor said, "The barriers are our fault. It's hard to get production people involved. Guys in the plants are concerned about one thing: get it in the door, and get it out the door. They don't have time. We've scheduled tailored workshops at the ERC for our interests and gotten people from divisions and plants to attend, but not as many as I would have liked. All in all it's been good; but interfacing with production people hasn't been as much as I'd like." Another commented, "I'm as frustrated as much with my own people as with the University. It is information or sample limited. There are roadblocks from both. By and large, though, it works well." A third noted some "competition" between in-house research staff and ERC researchers that tended to further complicate some proprietary concerns: "The benefits might have been greater if we had been more proactive in cooperation with the ERC. A degree of competition existed between our in-house programming staff and the ERC. Our research groups had their own staffs who possessed pieces of knowledge that could have assisted the ERC, but there were two difficulties: first, it is difficult for a firm to release proprietary software; second, there was a degree of "academic" competition between our people and ERC researchers as to who would achieve major advances." Other studies of university-industry partnerships have reported similar findings.[13]

Our follow-up telephone interviews also tended to confirm the finding that a low commercialization potential or insufficiently applied nature of ERC research is generally not considered much of a barrier to a company's benefiting from the ERC partnership. On the contrary, the telephone interviews suggested that firms value a flexible, multifaceted R&D supplier that allows them to buy into a capability to solve future problems (that cannot be specified at the time of the investment decision). One industry representative commented, for example, "I got into it because it's a technical area I want to see additional work in. And because we're not going to be doing this basic work [in-house]. We will do closely related work, but not identical. We work on problems 3-7 years out; it takes 3-4 years for a technology to get into a product plan. You can't do too many of these 7-year things; we take some of the ones we can't pursue and get them going in a university, assign someone here to stay in touch, and report back when they see something interesting. At the same time, they get to know some of the students whom we should hire. If you get a technology in addition, that's a bonus."

In a similar vein, another industry sponsor reported, "We look for the fundamental part. For us, it's the ideas that are more risky, exploratory things, understanding phenomena, that we'll be more likely to interact with the Center about. We don't want them to do the development for us. We can't support the amount of long-range research we used to. A Center with that combination of activities -- both fundamental and shorter term -- is very important to us. In the ERC, they are both together, and that's helpful. Some researchers at the Center even do both. The advisory board helps avoid letting the Center be pulled in opposing directions. If you end up with only applied interests on the board, the Center will drift in that direction."

One interviewee injected an admonition to NSF and the Congress: "Industry support for ERC's is a strategic investment. This is one thing that concerns me, though. Congress and NSF want ERCs to be directly relevant to industry, just as industry is pulling back from long-range research. We built up the research infrastructure in this country by focusing on a basic research environment in universities. Once you start focusing on technologies and development, you run into proprietary areas and a major set of difficulties. You're making universities do an 'unnatural act': applied research directed toward a market. They don't have the knowledge of the market. The resulting technology push means they won't go in the right direction because they don't know the market. When you judge them by relevance to industry, you have a built in failure. Failure to renew ERCs is an example of this."

Another interviewee had a somewhat different perspective of the traditional role of university research and a slightly different admonition for NSF: "I regard it as unique aspect of the ERC that it truly represents manufacturing interests rather than academic interests. It's the National Science and not the National Engineering Foundation: NSF expects science to dominate engineering. I see this played out at all the universities. Wherever I go, tenure and publications are the drivers, not interaction with industry. Only recently has NSF sounded the call about where research should be focused. NSF is beginning to look at the needs of industry. But it will require a long cultural change, and not much is happening to support it yet. A good technical report doesn't do a professor much good. Industrial members aren't interested in papers with a lot of esoteric math. The ERC has done remarkably well in this area; they recognized that only some faculty are interested in working with industry, so they built up their own internal staff who were not tenure track faculty. This is essential if the Center is to work well with industry."

Some respondents to the survey as well as some of the follow-up telephone interviewees cited examples of what they consider barriers to receiving benefits from the ERC; some of these are shown below. 

Industry representatives were asked whether their company units had participated in industry-university research collaborations other than with an ERC over the previous five years, through such means as research contracts, consulting arrangements with individual faculty, or participation in R&D consortia. The 82.2% of total respondents who had interacted in one or more such ways with non-ERC university-based programs were asked how the ERC compared with most of the other programs with which they had been involved. As shown in Table 20, over half of the respondents considered the ERC to have more of a cross-disciplinary approach than other university programs (58.2%), and just under half considered the ERC to be more oriented to applied R&D (48.0%) and its students to be better prepared for work in industry (47.9%). Over a third of respondents considered the ERC to be more oriented towards transfer of technology (44.9%), allow for greater industry involvement in setting its research agenda (44.2%), and provide a more neutral ground for meeting with other companies (34.7%). 

Several of the industry representative with whom follow-up telephone interviews were made commented on what they perceived as a difference between their experiences with the ERC and other university collaborations. One said, "Normally I would never go near a university for this kind of stuff. I regarded them as 'slack environments'. I haven't found this at any of the ERCs I deal with. I've been pleased. This experience restored my faith in university research. The ERC results gave a lot more confidence to our management in using these techniques. They would always ask before, what backs up you calculations? This test gave us credibility and gave confidence to our planning engineers." Another commented, "A key characteristic of the ERC is openness and an orientation toward using science and technology to benefit industrial applications. Industry is not a "dirty word" in that environment. Students get a general exposure to industry during their tenure there and through internships. They are much more grounded in the real world."

Benefits by Years of Company Involvement in the ERC

Overall benefits from participation in an ERC are almost directly proportional to the number of years over which a company has been involved with the program (see Table 21). With the exception of those respondents whose companies had been involved for a year or less, the percentage who reported a great deal of overall benefits from participation increased from 15.2% for those whose companies had been involved for two-to-four years, 21.7% for those involved for five-to-seven years, and 36.1% for those involved for eight-to-ten years. Somewhat surprisingly, almost a fourth of respondents whose company had been involved for a year or less (22.6%) reported that they had benefited a great deal from their participation; however, another fourth (25.8%) reported that the benefits had been little or none, whereas this was a relatively infrequent response from those industry representatives whose companies had been involved with an ERC for five years or longer.

The effect of ERC participation on overall company competitiveness shows a somewhat similar (but borderline statistically significant) relationship with the number of years in which the company has participated in the ERC (see Table 22). Again, in general, the longer the company had been involved, the greater the impact on overall company competitiveness. A number of companies that had participated for a year or less, however, also reported a great deal of impact on overall company competitiveness; although 43.8% of these relatively new ERC participants had experienced little or no such impact as yet, 12.5% reported that there had been a great deal of effect. It is possible that this is a function of size of the company unit or firm, but, as noted previously, we were unable to devise a useful indicator of this for the purpose of this survey. 

Benefits by Extent of Types of Personal and Company Collaboration with the ERC

Overall company benefits from participation in an ERC are also almost directly proportional to the extent of interaction with the ERC by company employees. Table 23 shows the number of different types of active personal collaboration with the ERC by respondents to the primary participant questionnaire and the overall benefits to the company from its ERC participation. Six different types of active collaboration were used in developing the table. Table 24 shows similar information by the number of different types of interaction with the ERC engaged in by company employees other than the respondent. Eight different types of active collaboration were used in constructing the table relating to other company employees.

In identifying types of active collaboration, we included participation in research at the ERC site, collaboration with ERC researchers working at the company's site, supervision of a current or former ERC student working at the company site, participation on an ERC student's thesis or dissertation committee, co-authoring publications or developing inventions jointly with ERC researchers, or receiving technical advice or consultation from ERC researchers. For the table on other company employees, we also included the use of facilities or equipment at the ERC site, and joint authorship of publications and joint development of software or inventions were counted separately, making a total of eight. In neither case was active collaboration taken to include attendance or participation in ERC seminars or workshops or reviewing ERC research results or publications, which, while representing the most common type of ERC-industry interaction, are relatively passive forms of participation.

As can be seen from the tables, overall company benefits from ERC participation increase steadily with the increase in types of collaboration between company employees and ERC researchers and students. The mean rating on a scale of 1 to 4 of overall company benefits from ERC participation rises steadily from 2.0 for those respondents who reported no active personal collaboration with the ERC to 3.3 for those who had engaged in four or more different types of active collaboration. Similarly, the mean rating of overall company benefits rises steadily from 2.2 for those companies in which no employees other than the questionnaire respondent had actively interacted with the ERC to 3.3 for those companies where company employees other than the respondent had participated in four or more different types of active collaboration with the ERC.

Reinforcing the results of the survey, one of the important common themes that arose in the follow-up telephone interviews conducted as a part of this study was the importance of active involvement and interaction: "what you get depends on what you put in." Companies regard benefits received from participation in an ERC to be a function of their efforts to make use of ERC results and contacts, rather than of the dollar amount of their membership fee or contract. One industry representative commented, "What you put into an organization like this is what you get out, and we put a lot in. The ERC team is the world's top resource in its area, so our association with them has been very beneficial." Another said, "The more you get involved, the more you get out of it. We've hired ERC people to put the time in. When you aren't growing and can't hire, you should send people there. We could do more of that than we do." Yet another industry sponsor, whose company is now in its second year of membership in an ERC, reported, "We are getting what we hoped for in the second year. In the first year, we weren't skilled at using them; maybe we expected too much. Now we're very pleased. We learned that you get out of this what you put in." One industry representative commented on the difficulties of putting enough effort into the ERC relationship when the firm was cutting back in other areas: "You typically can always get more out of it if you put more in. If I could have somebody take half time and get a joint project going, I think we would get more out of it. But it's hard to do this in a constrained environment. We are moving in that direction, though. I am trying to identify the right way to do this, and we might engage in personnel exchanges or joint projects."

Benefits by Degree of Company Influence on the ERC's Research Agenda

Industrial sponsors of the ERCs were asked their perceptions of how much influence their companies or company units have on the ERC's research agenda. As shown in Figure 13, relatively few (9%) believed they had a great deal of influence, slightly more than a fourth (28%) viewed their degree of influence as moderate, and slightly under a third (31%) believed they had at least some influence. Almost a third (31%), however, believed that they had little or no influence on the research agenda of the ERC in which they participated. 

As shown in Table 25, there is a direct correlation between the amount of influence a company has on the ERC's research agenda and overall benefits to the company from participation. While only 7.4% of companies that had little or no influence on the ERC's research agenda reported that they benefited a great deal from their participation, close to half (48.4%) of the companies that had a great deal of influence on the research agenda reported benefiting a great deal. The mean rating on a scale of one to four of overall benefits to the company from its ERC participation rises from 2.1, slightly below the midpoint, for those companies with little or no influence on the research agenda, to 2.7 for those companies with some influence, 3.2 for those companies with a moderate amount of influence, and 3.5 for those companies with a great deal of influence. 

One of the main findings of the 1988 GAO survey of industry sponsorship of the ERCs was the need to strengthen the amount of influence that participating firms have on the research agenda of the associated ERC. The report noted, "A significant concern participants raised is their influence on the ERC's research agenda. A majority of the participants reported some to little or no influence on the ERC research agenda. Many also commented that this aspect should be strengthened or changed."[14]

As shown in Table 27, which compares the responses of industry participants in the GAO survey with respondents to the SRI survey, this situation does not appear to have improved in the intervening years, and if anything, has deteriorated. A significantly higher percentage -- almost double -- of current ERC industry sponsors (30.7%) reported that they have little or no influence on the ERC's research agenda as did industry sponsors in 1988 (15.5%). Given that influence on the ERC research agenda correlates rather directly with both the overall benefits to the company and the impact on company competitiveness from its ERC participation, it would appear that this aspect of the program remains in need of strengthening or change. 

Membership Versus Contracts -- Does it Make a Difference?

Table 28 shows outcomes from participation in an ERC by respondents whose companies provided membership fees but did not have any research contracts with the ERC compared with respondents whose companies had research contracts with the ERC but paid no membership fees. There are some differences in percentage of respondents reporting different outcomes, but by and large, the differences are not large enough to be statistically significant.

Receipt of direct technical assistance from the ERC is significantly higher for companies with research contracts, as is the use of ERC facilities and equipment. In addition, a significantly greater percentage of companies with contracts as opposed to those with formal ERC membership but no contracts report a decrease in the lead-time needed for the introduction of a new product or process as a direct result of their participation in the ERC. Not surprisingly, the impact of ERC participation on increased interaction with other firms is considerably higher for companies with formal ERC memberships as opposed to research contracts, but the difference is not as great as one might have expected and is not sufficient to be statistically significant. 

Technological Area -- Does it Make a Difference?

We were interested in finding out whether benefits from participation in an ERC differed depending upon the technological area of the research focus of the ERC. Table 29 shows overall benefits to the company from participation in an ERC by the technological area of the ERC in which the company participates. Table 30 shows similar information on the effect of ERC participation on overall company competitiveness. While there are slight differences in percentage breakdowns by the technological area of the ERC, chi-square analysis showed that in neither case are these differences sufficient to be statistically significant. 

Nor do there appear to be many particularly significant correlations between the technological area of the ERC and the degree to which companies benefit from specific types of outcomes from participation. As shown in Table 31, while there are a handful of types of outcomes of ERC participation where the mean rating of the degree of value attached to that outcome is significantly higher or lower in certain technological areas than is the mean across all areas, as often as not these have to do with outcomes that may have more to do with differences in modes of operation of the individual ERCs involved than with the nature of the research itself. For example, it is difficult to see how differences in the technological area of the ERC's research might account for a significantly higher or lower than average increase in interaction with other firms or development of joint research proposals with other ERC sponsors. In only two of the cases where the means by technological area differ significantly from the means across all areas does it appear that the differences may actually reflect some difference in the nature of the research involved -- the significantly higher than average amount of benefit perceived from use of ERC equipment and facilities in the energy and resource recovery area and the significantly lower than average degree of benefit from the licensing of ERC-developed technology or software in the materials processing area. 

The Perspective of the ERC "Champion" Versus that of the Budget Approver

Results of the case studies and focus groups conducted as part of the design stage of this study, as well as some of the findings from other analyses of university-industry cooperative research programs, led us to believe that it was important for the survey to distinguish carefully between at least two key roles within the firms supporting the ERCs: (1) the "champion," which we defined as the person who interacts most intensively with the ERC, and (2) the "approver," the person who reviews or approves the budget for the unit's participation. As the instructions to the ERCs regarding names with which to provide us for the primary participant questionnaire were clearly intended to identify the individuals who had the most intensive interaction with the ERCs, respondents to the primary participant questionnaire were in turn requested to provide the name of the individual (if other than him or herself) who reviews or approves the budget for their company units' ERC participation so that a subsequent, slightly shorter version of the questionnaire could be sent to the "approver". As it turned out, between the 355 individuals who responded to the primary participant questionnaire and the 138 who responded to the secondary, subsequently administered questionnaire, there were only 34 unique cases in which respondents reported having responsibility for approving budgets for their companies' ERC participation but were not the main points of contact between their company units and the ERC.

This rather small group of "approvers" who were not at the same time the "champions" was compared with the much larger group of "champions" -- the 331 respondents from both the primary and secondary questionnaire who reported that they were the main points of contact between their company units and an ERC (whether they were additionally responsible for approving budgets was not viewed as a reason for disallowing them as "champions"). Because of the small size of the "approver but not champion" group, only rather broad questions could be compared. A comparison of how "champions" and "approvers" assessed the overall benefits to their companies from participation in an ERC is shown in Table 32. A comparison of how they assessed the effects of participation on the overall competitiveness of their companies is shown in Table 33. In neither case are the differences statistically significant.