again I repeat, is dependent upon the level at which you wish to enter it, and if you want to nickle and dime it with postage stamps, then this is one way. If you want to have a functional system at a somewhat higher level of organization than that, then one pays the price. Now, I can point to several evidences of the general willingness to pay this price. Several of the States are actively engaged in developing regional information networks in which they are putting up half of the money. I view this as being very real evidence of some State willingness to participate in a national system. In talking with Government agencies I find, while they are unwilling to assume the responsibility for a national network, they are very anxious to become a part of it, for the same reason that I'm anxious to have one; it reduces their unit cost. MR. BANDY: We have one question. Chuck Bragg from Michigan. MR. BRAGG: Have you had any public reaction to OSTS funding of the institutions? MR. BANDY: Well, as I explaned earlier even though we have reviewed the reports we have taken no formal action on it. This is something we really can't access right now in view of our funding levels. This will be a pretty substantial undertaking and a major commitment. This has to be given more study before we actually move in that direction. MR. BUTLER: In Ohio we have been exploring the possibility of tying into one of the NASA regional centers at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. It seems to me that they probably have three or four years of experience. They developed contacts with other sources and prepared tapes so that they have some input from the Commerce Department through their clearinghouses. When we visited them, they said they were trying to develop contacts with additional sources of information, and they do have some experience in withdrawing information from a number of different sources. I really wonder how much experience is applicable to the problem which you consider, that they have already had, in effect? Might your recommendation not, in effect, start over some of the work that they have several years of experience in? I just wonder how much applicable experience they have? MR TYSON: Quite a lot, and they are one of something like two hundred such groups that we have identified, who have very substantial experience. That is what I meant to imply when I began by saying that the Information Network is as much a matter of philosophy as it is a matter of hardware or money. If, for example, we could sit those two hundred groups down who have the greatest experiencesit them down together and say "Why don't you guys get together." Then a National Information Network could be created in the time that it took them to come to some agreement. MR. BANDY: We have Bill Sheenik with us. He runs the NASA RD Center at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and is also involved to some extent in the New Mexico STS program. Do you have any comments to make about the questions Steve Butler raised concerning the experience NASA RDC's may have gained in reaching firms similar to the kind STS is approaching? MR. SCHEENIK: Claude, I think the relationship to the task group's report is that we have a great deal of experience in terms of collecting and disseminating information and providing the kinds of volumes and service that needs to go with an information system. I think that as far as the Information Network is concerned you could go another step further, as Joe Tyson mentioned, and link together some of these sources so that they could more effectively serve greater audiences. MR. TYSON: The amount of ferment in the idea of a National Information Network and the steps required to, in fact, create one, is not limited to science and technology by any means, and the actions that are now going on are very, very substantial. We can already foresee the time when the entire Library of Congress will be on card and on film and on tape, so that lists will be much easier to generate than they now can be generated, We can see in the actions of many groups, developing thesaurus or micro-the raurus with their particular subject matter, as being a significant step forward; because just as this problem is standardization, so it also is one of our problems standardization. But these problems are being tackled, and it is only a question of time. It now looks as though if we begin now to consider a National Information Network, by the time we are ready these other actions should have been accomplished so that we do not have to reinvent the wheel. (Whereupon, at 12:05 o'clock p.m., a luncheon recess was taken.) TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AND INDUSTRIAL INNOVATION Conference Luncheon Address by Sumner Myers, Washington, D.C.-New York City, October 10, 1967 This afternoon I am going to talk about the technical highlights of a three-year study of technology transfer and industrial innovation conducted by the National Planning Association under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation. The purpose of the study was, for the first time, to get some quantitative--and I want to emphasize this to get some quantitative data about the transfer of technology, particularly military-space technology. The way we went about it was to personally interview several hundred scientists and engineers in three industries, housing, railroads and computers. We discussed with them the innovations that they themselves had come up with and had first-hand knowledge about. In all, we selected 567 innovations, not counting the ones we threw away because they were not innovations at all. I think the study does give a fairly reliable picture of the information-innovation process in the three industries examined, but does not portray the process in the economy as a whole with any degree of precision. However, it is our impression that the picture is not radically different for the economy as a whole and that the relationships developed from our analysis of 567 innovations may serve as indicators of the more general situation. Data from a wider cross-section of innovations would surely reveal important differences in detail. But the figures I am going to present from the study probably can be taken to represent rough orders of magnitude for the over-all economy. Some of the figures may give indications of how to accomplish more transfers of technical information, more effectively. I shall begin my discussion of the highlights of the study by speaking on the role of technical knowledge, particularly government-funded knowledge, in stimulating innovation. We can think of knowledge as playing either an active or a passive role in bringing about an innovation. In its passive role, knowledge is drawn upon to solve a problem that has been defined, however roughly, and is being worked upon. Conventionally, this pattern is described by the well-worn phrase, "necessity is the mother of invention." Another way to describe the passive role of information is "problems in search of solutions." But information also may play an active role in stimulating new ideas for innovations. Granting that problems--especially market problems--represent a powerful force in stimulating innovations, it is true that technical knowledge in itself may actively stimulate an innovation by defining heretofore undefined needs and problems. A recent New York Times news item illustrates the active role of information. The item describes a trade exhibit where retail merchants were shown the latest automation techniques for billing customers, controlling inventories, and so on. The first line of the news story quotes one of the merchants as saying, "All of a sudden you discover that there are problems you didn't know you had." The story goes on to say that, "This comment was typical of the reaction of many other merchants attending the conference on the presentation of new equipment and services." The information embodied in the statement, "new equipment and services" cited the problems and needs that retailers have not been able to articulate before. Rossman, a noted writer on invention, observed in the 1930's that, "a problem is best stated in terms of its solution." The New York Times story also makes a point that I think should be taken into account: before the innovation itself had appeared, the market felt little and demanded nothing. Personal experiences that we all have had confirms what we all intuitively know: new information can play an active role and can evoke needs that seemingly didn't exist before as well as ideas for meeting those needs. But the important question is, how often does new information play an active role and how often a passive role? Chart 1 (page 24) shows that information played an active role in 27 percent, or 153 of the innovations studied by NPA; and played a passive role in 73 percent, or 414, of the innovations studies. There are three points I should like to stress about the information that played a passive role in 414 of the innovations, that were problem stimulated innovations. First, the information was used to solve particular problems being worked upon. For the most part, these were market-related problems involving new competitive products, chaging customer requirements, anticipation of potential demand, and so forth. Second, the technical information that led to the solution of these problems was already well diffused in the innovator's field of expertise. I think this should be taken into account in your activities of diffusing information. And third, about 20 percent of the information used to solve problems involved some kind of a search. The information was not immediately at hand and sometimes required a substantial effort in obtaining it. Under what circumstances does information play an active role? In one pattern of circumstances, new information encountered in working on one problem evoked a somewhat different, though related, problem and consequently stimulated an unintended innovation. The most famous example, I believe, is Carothers' synthesis of nylon while carrying out polymerization research in an attempt to produce a synthetic rubber. Two relevant cliches are appropriate here, "Chance favors the prepared mind" and "you've got to be working on something in order to discover anything." In our study of problem-related innovation, dramatic "serendipity," such as this, was relatively infrequent. More often, someone on his own initiative offered the innovator a piece of information that was intended to solve a problem that the innovator was already working on. In these cases, the information didn't help that particular problem, but it did prove useful in a completely unexpected way by activating a new idea for a related innovation. I suspect that this happens more often than our study was able to determine. I say this because systems analysis and problem solving are so much in fashion, that serendipity is sort of "out." In this connection, I would like to quote a poem by Alexander Pope: "In vain the sage, with retrospective eye, would from the apparent conclude the why, infer the motive from the deed, and show that what we chanced was what we meant to do." I think we find a lot of that sort of thing happening. In another pattern of circumstances new technical information may reactivate an old idea. In effect, the new technical information lowers the barriers to the implementation of the old idea, changing priorities among ideas that the innovator may have been toying with for some time. Armed with the new technical information, the innovator is now willing to work on an idea that previously he would not have considered. Now, ordinarily, few projects that are economically and technically unrealistic are started. Ideas for innovations that are not yet feasible are often put aside, sometimes for years. Technology, as you all know, must be used in packages. If all the related pieces are not available, the incomplete package may lie around quite awhile until some piece of technology comes along to complete it. Chart 2 (page 26) analyzes the 153 innovations that were found to be actively stimulated by information. The innovations are classified according to whether the innovator was or was not working on a related problem when he came across the stimulatory information. The upper bar shows this breakdown for stimulatory information from sources other than the government; the lower bar, for stimulatory information that was derived from government-supported sources. Over one-half of 137 innovations were actively stimulated by information from other than government sources when the innovator was working on a related problem. The 16 innovations in which technical information resulting from government funded research played an active role show a significant difference. Only 12.5 percent of the innovations were actively stimulated by technical information from Federal sources when the innovator was working on a related problem. In 87.5 percent of the cases, the activating government information stimulated the innovator to work on a wholly new problem that he was not working on--indeed, that he might not have considered working on. The information that flows from government-funded programs seems to play a stronger and much more stimulatory role in that it more often encourages the innovator to move into new fields of activity. This discussion about the information-innovation process provides the background for a sharper focus on the role of technical information emanating from government-supported sources in stimulating innovation in the economy. Only 10 percent of the 567 innovations studied were based on information generated from government supported programs and approximately seven percent of the information was generated from programs related to the military and space effort. This, in itself, is an interesting finding. While the data from this study do not purport to be representative of the economy as a whole, they nevertheless indicate that many more innovations must be analyzed in order to draw meaningful inferences about a necessarily smaller subgroup of government contributions. These findings may come as a surprise to many people. You may wonder why this 10 percent isn't more evident in every day life. I would like to observe that many people resist this idea, some for |