Managing Technical Risk: Understanding Private Sector Decision Making on EarlyStage, Technology-Based Projects

摘要

Decades of theoretic and empirical work on the process of innovation suggest thatcommercial firms have inadequate incentives to undertake some varieties of early-stage, high-risk technology development projects that have potential to generate radically new products and processes. In the late 1980s, the stimulus of Cold War military R&D was fading. Low cost, high-quality Asian production was eroding U.S. high-tech markets. Policy makers and corporate leaders alike became concerned that U.S. firms must not only improve their productivity, but could best sustain economic growth through new product and process innovation. There was evidence that firms were systematically underinvesting in leading-edge technologies and failing to commercialize the products of their own research activities effectively. These concerns, buttressed by academic arguments pointing to a potential market failure in the area of early-stage technology developments, motivated new potential market failure in the area of early-stage technological developments, motivated new proposals for the role of government in the innovation system. A key initiative that came out of this process was the creation of the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) through the passage of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988.