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Science-Based Economic Development edited by Susan Raymond
Susan U. Raymond
Director, Policy Programs
New York Academy of Sciences
Introduction
The conference on Policy for Science-Based Development was organized to place a premium on small-group discussion of pragmatic factors behind the development of successful linkages between science and technology policy and economic development. The vast majority of the agenda was dedicated to discussion between representatives of developing and industrialized nations, seeking to learn from their varying experiences and to identify mutual strategies for future success. While the richness of the interactions that characterized that small-group process is difficult to reproduce in a volume such as this, the summaries contained in this chapter reflect the deliberations and conclusions of the nine working group sessions.
Partnerships Between Government, Industry, and Universities
Babasola Chinsman
Resident Representative
United Nations Development Programme
Lagos, Nigeria
In a world of increasing specialization, government, industry, and universities all have very important roles to play in the complex interplay of interests which constitute national partnerships. Such partnerships have four critical characteristics.
First, they represent a coming together of diverse groups of people with a common interest and vision. However different their perspective, the members of the partnership must share a desire for common ground.
Second, partnerships require commitment. They must be premised on a sense of community and belonging for the long term.
Third, they require leadership. Historically, however, that initial leadership has not necessarily come from within the traditional university science and technology community. Rather, experience teaches that the "champion" for S&T partnerships leadership may be in the private corporate sector, general academic leadership, or legislative or executive branches of government. Indeed, in many cases, the champion is not affiliated with S&T at all, but is a general economic or public leader who understands the importance of the linkage between technology and economic growth.
Fourth, partnerships require deliberate effort. They are not created by theoretical discussion. They emerge from focused, proactive initiatives in the context of mutually felt economic, social, or political needs by groups who understand that the stake they hold in answering those needs is common. Moreover, experience has shown that the partnership effort must start with problem identification. The most enduring partnerships are not ones that were developed subsequent to one or the other partners' identifying a problem or need, but, rather, ones that came into being expressly to identify a mutual need and strategy. They reflect a common vision for the future that may (or may not) be immediately linked to a near-term problem.
In the developing world, there are many institutional barriers to the emergence of such partnerships. Policy and decision makers in developing countries generally lack an awareness of the importance of science and technology development in the whole economic development process. In countries where trade tends to dominate economic activity, very little attention is paid to, for example, aggressively linking S&T to local manufacturing capacities. Few champions for S&T partnerships are to be found outside of the S&T community itself.
What needs to change if awareness is to be improved and the environment for a partnership approach is to be improved? First, governments must become better informed. Perhaps political systems change and become more participatory, and there is potential for a new "champion" to emerge from legislative systems that are relatively new and positioned to be more focused on change. Second, there must be a vision. Interested parties must come together and articulate a clear and specific mission statement that is practical and dedicated to deploying available assets strategically among the university, corporate, and government sectors. The mission must be accompanied by a rigorous but flexible strategic plan for tracking and monitoring the achievement of goals. Third, the private sector must step forwardÑ and must be allowed to step forwardÑ as a leader. The basic principles of consumer demand and return to investment underpin business decision-making and must also underpin partnership strategies. Government can play the role of catalyst, but leadership must increasingly rest in the private sector. Fourth, the partnership must be committed to capacity building and education, with continuous attention paid to the human resources skill base and its upgrading.
Technology transfer takes place by the movement of and transfer of people. Partnerships in the developing world will require that the individuals involved in business, universities, and government come to know one another and understand their different views, yet appreciate their common interests. A decade of patience and persistence will be essential, but the result will enhance both economic development and sustainability.
Human Resources
John J. Desmond
University of South Florida
and
Eliene Augenbraun
U. S. Agency for International Development
Human resources strategies which link science and technology to economic development require the same type of entrepreneurial spirit that characterizes successful business investments. They require attention to the needs and markets within industry. The market, to some extent, needs to drive human resources development strategies in technology-based economic development planning. The learning process must be continuous. Technology changes; industrial mix changes. Programs to focus on human skills must also be prepared to change, and must inculcate a process of continuous learning and change into the workforce.
Successful educational strategies require attention to problems of access. Achieving widespread benefits from workforce enhancement in technological skills requires that such strategies reach out to the workforce wherever it is located. Technology, then, can play an important role as the purveyor of education, as well as the subject of education. In the developing world, and in some areas of the industrialized world, distance is the critical barrier to access. New mechanisms and use of technologies which allow long-distance learning are becoming more widespread. Tremendous success has been achieved in some experiments, with the initiatives of the State of Florida providing evidence of what can be accomplished if long-distance learning strategies are widely implemented.
Successful strategies also recognize the need to enable the totality of societal resources in contributing to economic development. Of particular importance in developing countries is linking human resources strategies to the status and capabilities of women in the workforce. By enabling greater participation of women in the workforce, especially in the technology-based workforce, human resources strategies can become a launching pad for other changes in the social and economic status of women.
Two elements of human resources development must be explicitly recognized, however. First, human resources development entails risk. Second, it cannot be successfully carried out or sustained without broad coalitions.
Risk is inherent in human resources development. That risk is of two sorts. First, investment in individuals may or may not pay off: Not every person will perform to his or her full capacity. The role of human resource development is to minimize that risk by ensuring that individuals have breadth and depth of skills so that as many individuals as possible can achieve their full capacity. The second type of risk is part of human resources planning itself. In short, the plan could be wrong. Particularly as economies become more market-driven, anticipating the nature of industrial development, evolution, and change becomes more complex. Trying to ensure the availability of the types of training and education programs that will be needed two steps ahead of such changes is difficult. Hence, it is critical that human resources assessments and strategies in technology-based economic development efforts provide deep and broad skill capacity.
The necessity of coalition building is also a prime concern. Human resources strategies cannot merely be a product of, nor only be implemented by, educational institutions. Industry-university partnerships are crucial. Moreover, those partnerships will be most effective if they are "bottom-up," that is, if they arise not from the dictates of policy, but from the needs, commitments, and resources of those who educate and those who employ tomorrow's workforce. In general, experience teaches that top-down strategies are much less likely to succeed than those which arise from, and focus on the needs of, workers, employers, and schools.
The Entrepreneurial University
Sir Alister Mcintyre
University of the West Indies
The entire drive toward entrepreneurial behavior at the level of the university originates from two related forces. On the one hand, rapid change and globalization around the world is forcing nations and corporations to change their structure of production, to modernize traditional products, and to push innovation in new products. In turn, this process requires new and more highly distributed sources of knowledge. Universities are the traditional repositories of such knowledge. They are best positioned to generate, disseminate, and, to some extent, apply that knowledge.
At the same time, the financial environment has changed. Public resources for education, and, indeed, for development in general, are becoming scarcer and scarcer. More and more universities are realizing that these resources will need to be earned in the marketplace of products and ideas, not simply secured from donors or governments. So, both the opportunities of changed economies and the pressures of changed financing lead universities to become entrepreneurs.
This trend is not without its dangers, however. There is a deep-seated fear within academia that a shift toward linkages with business and industry will bias the university toward applied research and away from the basic academic mission of the institution. The need to reconcile the new role with the traditional academic objectives of universities is a continuing challenge. There are at least two approaches to that reconciliation. First, it is important that universities have a well-articulated framework that makes clear the relationship between more entrepreneurial or applied research roles and the overall educational mission of the university. Second, insofar as possible, new endeavors should be developed on the basis of synergies with other, traditional areas of university concern. As a result, the innovative portions of the new university efforts will be both widely understood and embedded within the universities' traditions.
A second key problem relates to the ownership of information. In a public university, in principle, knowledge is generally seen as a public good. The tension between that viewpoint and the need for proprietary information by the corporate sector results in difficult tradeoffs. Questions of time-to-publication, private contracting, and the like are vexed and have generated few universal solutions.
Where have this new generation of entrepreneurial university leaders come from? In a few cases, leadership has come from within the university. In the vast majority of cases, however, it has come either from the business community or from government. In most cases, the government's role was one of encouraging and being supportive of new directions and environments, but not dictating or directing them. This delicate balance of nonacademic leadership and encouragement versus nonacademic control is difficult to achieve. The process will be different in differing countries, cultures, and circumstances.
The benefits from an entrepreneurial approach to the university's role are to be reaped on many fronts. Existing cases indicate that professors benefit not only in terms of compensation, but from seeing their research translated into practical business applications. Students benefit both from the opportunity to work with real problems and innovations, and from the practical preparation for the transition from school to profession. Nations benefit to the extent that innovations yield real returns to the economy.
The problem is that, within the university, benefits are not necessarily evenly spread. As in the world of business, entrepreneurial efforts can result in a hierarchy of affluence, with some faculty members receiving substantially more compensation than others. This is not an issue that can be avoided. Neither, to be frank, is it an issue that is new. Faculty in medical sciences or business schools traditionally have often been compensated at higher rates than, for example, in fine arts. Indeed, the key problem within the university in its new entrepreneurial guise tends to be the differential felt by the humanities, which has difficulty finding a "niche" within the newly entrepreneurial university. A potential compensating solution would be to apply part of the income from more S&T-oriented activities to those faculties that would not otherwise share in the benefits, without decreasing incentives to the innovative departments.
Despite such problems, none of which will be easily resolved, the emergence of entrepreneurial universities is probably an irrevocable change in the character and activities of institutions of higher learning as they prepare for the twenty-first century.
Crossing Over between Industrial and LDC Experience
Rustam Lalkaka
Senior Advisor
United Nations Development Programme
The premise that there are lessons that can be learned on both sides in examining the experiences of industrialized nations and developing countries as regards technology-economic development links has some validity. Both can benefit from understanding the totality of the experience available. However, that learning has limits. The valuable insights that can be gained must them be translated into the specific circumstances and context of the nation formulating and applying policy to its own circumstances.
The role of government presents a particularly difficult problem. Case experience both from the U.S. and from other industrialized nations indicates that government agencies often have successfully spearheaded economic development efforts, but that, at later points of the process, the same agencies become obstacles for further growth and maturation of the initiatives. There is thus a tendency to de-emphasize the governmental role and to place overarching emphasis on private initiative. However, in developing countries, the necessity of including government in technology development strategies remains and the public sector continues to play a significant economic role because the private corporations and their associations often do not have the financial or technical capacities, and because science policy initiatives together with scientific research are considered to be part of the infrastructure to be provided by governments.
Are democratic or authoritarian regimes more conducive to economic growth? Evidence from Southeast Asia would seem to indicate that both systems can promote progress and that either could result in stagnation, depending on local culture, conditions, and quality of leadership. Again, context is critical. It is clear that technology strategies for economic development have employment repercussions in developed countries. While there is some debate about cause and effect, as well as about the appropriate time frames within which those effects should be assessed, there is little doubt that technology has changed the nature of employment in industrialized economies. In most industrializing environments, however, technology, selected appropriately and applied purposefully, still generates positive employment effects. The problems encountered in industrialized economies are quite far in the future for less developed countries, if, indeed, they occur at all.
Despite such caveats about the ability to "cross over" between developed and developing country situations, however, examination of case experience illuminates important points for consideration in developing strategies that will link technology to economic development in less developed settings:
Innovation without Science Policy
Grace Goodell
Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
The Johns Hopkins University
The core framework for assessing technology-economic development strategies without science policy was laid out in the paper of Dr. Titus Adeboye of the African Technology Policy Studies Network. Dr. Adeboye sets out three models.
The first model is based on the U.S. approach. Recent U.S. experience, in which innovation springs mainly from university, government, or private research, is capital-intensive and not self-sustaining except through significant levels of continued R&D funding. The working group felt that this model is not viable in most poorer developing countries. The "vital signs" for capital-intensive strategies relative to economic growth are underdeveloped in many countries at this point in time.
The second, "cluster" model is based on the experience of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the U.S. In this model, the entrepreneur is the source of innovation. The entrepreneur has broad skills, founds a firm, and employs people who themselves go on to become entrepreneurs. The process is based on continuous learning and a strong information-sharing culture, in which all relevant institutions constantly interact with one another. This interaction of suppliers, main producers, clients, financiers, and competitors creates social clusters of companies and institutions that are very nimble, learn and change quickly, and find multiple ways to link to governments and universities. Change is incremental. The government role is to help clusters grow and prosper, not to lead or to finance those clusters. This "cluster" model can be seen in geographic settings as diverse as northeastern Italy, Sabu in the Philippines, Kenya and the states of Oregon or Georgia in the U.S. This model is very appropriate for many developing countries.
The third model, the "techno-entrepreneurial" model, is exemplified by the "East Asian tigers." It adapts technology from abroad and harnesses it for domestic economic growth. The government takes an entrepreneurial role in designing the strategy and then developing and relating industries to this strategy. The model is premised on a competent civil service, altruistic political leadership, and government leverage of foreign resources for upgrading human resources. Again, although advocated in many quarters, this model was not judged by the working group to have much utility for most developing countries owing to its requirements for a competent civil service and altruistic political leadership. Dr. Adeboye's paper shows how miserably it has failed in Africa under World Bank promotion. For structural reasons fine-tuning will not resolve the problems.
Returning to the cluster model, an important element of its applicability in developing country settings is the degree to which it relies on the market for innovation. It does not require strong governments. Rather, as the economic clusters gather strength, they themselves become stakeholders and pressure the political process to support further technological progress. In a sense, economic development is the driving force for political development.
A second utility of this model in developing countries is that it shifts the definition of innovation away from big, formal scientific or technological breakthroughs to incremental improvements. The innovation vision is cumulative and "contagious" through networks of small-scale entrepreneurial establishments. Such a setting is very descriptive of most developing-country situations.
How does this model relate to formal public policy? Certainly, a minimum of political stability is essential for its success. No model for science-based development is likely to work in civil war. However, beyond that condition, direct technology-targeted public policy is not necessary. The cluster approach is bottom-up. Planning and growth take place through negotiations among a wide range of economic actors; progress does not depend on public policy marching orders. Indeed, over time, policy itself begins to articulate what is, in fact, already on the ground through the economic behavior of clusters. The Oregon case illustrates this "trickle-up" effect between private initiative and public policy.
Equity
Nancy Carson Associates
Alexandria, Virginia
The discussion of equity is ancient, contentious, and philosophical. Tracking the equity effects of technology-based economic development strategies is difficult because the effect is felt not only in technology-intensive sectors, but throughout all sectors of the economy. It is therefore misleading to compare what is happening within a particular high-tech economic sector and what is happening elsewhere in the economy.
What is clear is that, even in technology-based industrialized countries, some people are being left behind. If a rising tide is lifting the economic boat, many people are not in it. On the other hand, there is nothing new about such problems. Since World War II, an emphasis on economic growth has not eliminated poverty. The issue of unemployment remains, and, indeed, is now confounded with poverty. So the addition of technology as "cause" is difficult to separate from the whole. Employment data reflect this difficulty. There is some case-level indication that technology-intensive development strategies leave behind a core of underskilled and unemployed people whose prospects are worse than before. The experience of East Austin within the booming high-tech economy of Austin, Texas provides such a sobering case. On the other hand, at the macro-level, there appears to be little convincing evidence that the last 10 or 15 years of technology-based development has resulted in long-term or structural changes in employment/unemployment patterns in the U.S. Much more study will be needed in this area as the technology wave washes further over the global economy.
Another measure of equity is access to S&T resources and innovation. Globally, 12 percent of the population controls 90 percent of the S&T resources. It is estimated that 20 percent of the global population is increasingly marginalized, or perceive themselves to be. There are also extreme disparities by country in environmental degradation, in poverty, and in gender equality. In our working group, there was some (but by no means universal) fear that the pace of technological change, as well as the differential access to technology, will relentlessly amplify the gap between the haves and the have-nots, because it will always tend to build on advanced resources.
Hence, new models of partnership based on capacity-building are needed. These initiatives must focus not on governments as guarantors of equity, but on empowering individuals, communities, and local organizations to develop opportunities for continued skill-building and technological advance. New technologies, especially those in information and communication, are enormously powerful tools. They can either bind society together or tear it apart. Diffusion of technologies throughout society can contribute to a positive effect. In this context, education becomes even more critical than it has been to date. Education, especially life-long learning, is the only way that the broad base of society can keep pace with technological change.
Members of this working group held a wide range of views on the equity-technology issue. There was a standard bell-curve distribution of hope and despair. Some believed that science and technology is not inherently a force for good, and that it may naturally lead to deeper inequities. Others believed that science and technology, coupled with education, is inherently so empowering and strengthening that it will lead to broad economic and societal progress. The central tendency of the discussion was to agree that while technology and knowledge are powerful growth engines creating wonderful abundance, they are not forgiving. As much care and attention must be given to ensuring that they do not exacerbate socioeconomic gaps as is given to harnessing them to drive the economy.
Institutional Innovation
Michael Chege
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Both industrialized and industrializing countries face a set of generic problems in institution-building and institutional innovation in science and technology, and in ensuring the sustainability of institutions that are created.
The first problem that must be faced is the tension between internal and external forces in institution building. Indeed, there was surprising similarity between the experience of the state of Maine vis-a-vis the U.S. federal government and that of developing countries vis-a-vis outside donors. In many cases, internal institutions, left to their own devices, will not necessarily innovate. They have a certain statistically oriented quality, grounded in tradition and the status quo. Yet, when change takes place due to outsiders, it often lacks internal credibility and does not involve internal stakeholders. Change then is not stable. Institutions rise to the fore, wither, and disappear because they lack deep roots. The experience of developing countries indicates that, when the incentives are correctly aligned, collaboration between internal and external forces can provide the spark that can lead to critical and significant change. This is why the door to outside influences and ideas must always remain open.
The second problem is the difficulty of crossing among the various levels of government that are often involved in S&T institution building. The central government may demand an S&T-based approach, but not provide the funds. One government agency may demand an S&T direction that contradicts the strategy of another agency. In the U.S., coordinating between federal, state, and local governments and agencies is complex. In developing countries, coordinating between various levels of government and, in addition, with a wide range of bilateral and multilateral donors is more complex still. There are no easy answers to this problem, but it is important to understand and anticipate it, and to develop institutional mechanisms for keeping the lines of government authority clear.
A third problem is coalition-building. Once an innovative S&T institution is established to link technology to economic objectives, how can it be sustained? How can one put together a coalition of stakeholders within a nation or city or state that will stay engaged with the endeavor and become both its supporters and its advocates? This is particularly difficult for S&T because technology is based on innovation. And leaders in innovation tend to be unique individuals. Too often, institutions then become dependent on a single leader whose departure, for whatever reason, leads to the weakening of the institution. The key is to put together, at the earliest stage, a constituency of leadership to support the new institution. This constituency should involve not only government and political leaders, but, more importantly, those who will be the beneficiaries of the programs envisioned. The institution must have roots in the communities (academic, business, etc.) that it seeks to serve. S&T institutions often ignore this public relations factor.
A fourth problem in institutional innovation is the difficulties in linking political leaders to policies of innovation. Should S&Tinstitutions be aligned with the very top of the political power structure or at its grass roots? Case experience provides no clear guidance on this question. The tendency is to argue that such institutions are more effective the closer they are to the top of the power pyramid. But there are many examples, especially from the U.S., that illustrate the risk of such a strategy. Technology strategies and technological advice to the head of government becomes a political lightening rod, damaging both the advice itself and broad public support for S&T strategies themselves. On the other hand, cases from Israel and Africa indicate that, in these settings, locating S&T institutional innovation close to national political leadership gave those institutions the capacity to significantly affect economic development strategies and national commitments to science and technology.
University-Industry Agreements
Ewa Gajeska-Blaisdell
Compaq Computer
Warsaw, Poland
If university-industry agreements are to be lasting, they must also be pragmatic. As a result, they need to be structured so as to meet the perceived priorities of business, on the one hand, and the university on the other.
What does industry look for in its relationships with universities? A critical element is access to long-term trends and developments. A typical corporation is focused on quarterly, annual, or (at most) 18-month results. This is how the market judges the corporation. It is how shareholders, and hence the board, assess performance. Yet, while responding to that exigency, technology-based companies must also look beyond that time period. Universities are valued partners providing that over-the-horizon perspective.
Second, corporations are always interested in access to resources and expertise both to leverage resources and as a source of technological capacity and new ideas. Leveraging resources gives a corporation competitive advantage by allowing it to accelerate the product development cycle and get to market more quickly. Research partnerships provide access to expensive equipment. University relationships also provide corporations with access to a pool of scientific talent for consulting and recruitment.
Third, industry looks to universities for training capacity. Universities can provide education not only for higher-level-degree scientists and managers, but also to upgrade skills of the technical workforce within the corporation.
Corporations also seek the immeasurables from university partnerships. Credibility, visibility, and prestige, however difficult to measure, do have value in the marketplace. Having a product that carries the stamp of a top-flight university carries consumer cachet. Corporations linked to universities, especially those companies engaged in manufacturing, can translate such assets into value in the commercial market.
Similarly, there are equivalent human advantages to partnerships. Highly-skilled, cutting-edge corporate scientists and managers need intellectually satisfying networks and relationships in order to be fully productive. Corporations themselves, no matter how technologically innovative, are not academic centers. The intellectual stimulation that highly-talented employees require is most often found in university settings. Hence, a corporate-university partnership also provides an extra "intellectual stimulation" opportunity that represents intangible value to the most important corporate assetÑits personnel.
In sum, the corporation looks to the university relationship for much more than a particular scientific product or technological opportunity. In an increasingly fastpaced, high-tech world, the university and corporation are increasingly interdependent. Industry leaders share joint stewardship with their academic colleagues in leading society into the a high-tech future.
What do universities look for in industrial relationships? First, of course, the corporate world provides a "reality check" for academic research. Partnerships are a way for academic researchers to test their ideas in the real world, and to assess how those likely to apply their research will view their effort. Consulting opportunities for faculty and access to employment opportunities for graduates is also a clear benefit. Depending on how the university organizes the partnership arrangements, these financial benefits can flow to the institution as well as to the individuals. And finally, there is the issue of research funding. As public funding for university research becomes more constrained, universities see their industrial relationships as alternative sources of support for important research and development programs. In turn, however, this objective creates a thorny problemÑhow to deal with intellectual property.
Problems of intellectual property challenge both industry and universities in their partnerships. Both have much to gain from a win-win strategy of cooperation. Both have much to lose through acrimony. Two general principles seem to smooth the process of negotiations. First, both sides must take a long-term view. Concerns about immediate return on the one hand, or immediate academic recognition on the other, need to be subordinated to the long-term benefit of continued partnership and collaboration. This requires that both parties accept reasonable time-framesÑreasonable delays in publication on the part of the academic partner, reasonable responsibilities for financing the patenting process on the part of the corporate partner.
A key to ensuring that reasonableness will rule is to be prepared with simple, agreed-upon contractual standards in advance. Partnerships should anticipate the intellectual property questions that will ultimately emerge, and develop mutually agreed upon parameters at the earliest stage of general discussions. In the subsequent heat of discovery, when tempers may be short and excitement high, intellectual property issues may be dealt with in a more straightforward fashion.
It is important to recognize, however, that ignoring intellectual property issues seriously imperils partnerships. The lack of clear intellectual property laws in developing countries and the nations of the former Soviet system has been a major roadblock to the formation of high value-added technology projects. Legislation, and associated enforcement systems, are a critical prerequisite to industry-university partnerships.
Roundtable on Finance: Defining Needs and Developing Alternatives
Victoria Hamilton
General American Investors
New York, New York
As one of the last sessions of the conference, our working group spent next to no time discussing whether a need existed to finance science and technology development. We all assumed (1) the premise that a sustainably healthy economy requires infusions of new technologies, practices, and even industries, and (2) the corollary that science and technology development could serve as an excellent incubator for such catalysts.
The mission seemed pretty clear. We therefore focused on tactics. What are some of the common obstacles? What useful lessons do the successes and failures of others' experiences offer? Could we adapt techniques from small populations to large ones? Did the urban and rural arenas have solutions in common? What beneficial exchange existed amongst different areas of the world?
A critical obstacle which spanned almost all experiences is the fundamental mismatch between the long-term and uncertain nature of significant science and technology development, and the short-term, results-oriented focus of most financial resources. After all, if a development looks short-term and certain, it will be—and should be—accomplished by the private sector. Science and technology development takes intelligent risks which are too much for the private sector to support on its own and which should redound to the general good. It may take five years or ten years or twenty or forty.
Yet, the support for science and technology development tends to come from governments, foundations, corporations, and other business sectors with a short-term focus. Both of our group's case studiesÑKansas and MontanaÑcreated innovative approaches to try to circumvent this fundamental mismatch between the long-term horizon of serious science and technology development, and funding to support such development. In Kansas, a certain percentage of the funds generated by the state lottery were earmarked for science and technology development. This saved Kansas's S&T development from the need to woo the legislature annually. In Montana, a 33 percent tax on every dollar of coal extracted went to S&T development. Again, there was no need to make an annual plea. In addition, there is a pleasing intellectual soundness to using the resources of an old industry to fund new ones.
However, even for funds earmarked for an extended period of time, review and revocation always lurk as a possibility. As one of my former bosses wisely said: "Two leaps per chasm is fatal." The challenge is to put together the long-term funding to support the long-term objectives of S&T development. Our group's discussion led to several guidelines:
Lesson One: Build a Constituency: No matter from where individuals came, they cited the need to build a constituency to support S&T Development. You must get everybody in power—or potentially in power—to listen, to talk, to be heard, and to strike some agreement.
Obviously, techniques differ if you are in Montana, where the population of one million is spread over a huge land mass, than if you are in Manhattan, where one million people ride the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's buses and trains during rush hour. In Montana, the legislature only meets for 90 days every two yearsÑthat is their window of opportunity. In envy, one of our members from Manhattan claimed the need to cut three deals a day, 365 days a year, to develop a consensus!
We discussed whether this lesson was as applicable in developing nations as it seemed in our case studies. Those with experience overseas in our group felt that it was, or would soon become so. Whereas a short time ago, a program was pretty secure if the head of state and minister of finance were convinced of its wisdom, now multiple interest groups are appearing in even the more autocratic of countries.
Lesson Two: Nurture your Constituency: This is a distinctly different point from that of lesson one. Successful programs often take advantage of crises to get started. Something—recession, depression, a terrible natural disaster, the withdrawal of a major corporation or industry from an area—draws diverse groups together for the moment. However, when that catalyst fades, so may the support. Moreover, the constituency changes over time. Legislatures evolve. Priorities shift. New power groups emerge. If you do not devotedly nurture and add to your constituency, the neglect will come back to bite you, in a manner of speaking.
On a more optimistic note, as your science and technology development program evolves, you may be able to interest groups that formerly saw no advantage to it. For example, if a product emerges from the development, you might then interest professional venture capitalists. When production facilities become necessary, you might then interest the banking and real estate groups.
Lesson Three: Develop Measures of Success: One of the tactical lessons that we heard over and over again was the need to develop, from the very beginning of the program, mechanisms for feedback, for quantitative and qualitative longitudinal evidence of success. Such data are not sufficient, but they are necessary. When you have to go back to the corporation that funded you, the legislature that set aside monies, the political leaders that put themselves on the line, and any other groups to which you made promises or compromises, you must be able to return with measurements that support your program. Very often, those individuals or groups need evidence of success to take back to their constituencies. You need to help them build their case.
With the backdrop of the discussion above, our group then considered the role of outsiders in S&T development. In some cases, the outsider offers talent and experience, in other cases, funds. In still other cases, the outsider offers some combination of both. Our group fairly widely felt that outsiders are important, but that they cannot drive the process. They don't usually have roots sufficiently well grounded for the program to continue after they have departed. a terrible natural disaste
Dr. Sergio Trindadi, formerly UN Assistant Secretary General for Science and Technology, has many talents, and one of them is that he is a superb diplomat. In private conversation, after his very stimulating and thoughtful comments, he told me what he might have added had he not been a diplomat. So, since diplomacy has never numbered among my top ten talents, I shall say it instead of him, and any blame belongs properly to me. "The sovereignty of the stakeholders should prevail over the tyranny of the experts."
Now, those of us who have devoted our lives to building an expertise that we then wish to share can feel skeptical of this comment, but I think it is true. It also reflects the lessons we outlined above. If you do not have the buy-off of the stakeholdersÑvarious combinations of politicians, legislatures, bureaucrats, money sources, the judiciary, and public and private interest groupsÑscience and technology development will not really take root. It will not survive the inevitable bad luck of recessions, changes of priorities, and the like. The grassroots support which comes from a feeling of ownership is vital, and is a great strength if you can cultivate it.
Finally, as I am, by chance, in the position of concluding these reviews, I would like to quote from an article I received from my father last week. It is authored by a gentleman called Joseph F. Coates. The article, entitled "What To Do When You Don't Know What You Are Doing," was published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change, so it seems as apt piece for our efforts.
In it Mr. Coates states that his "thesis is simple. Most people in positions of authority, whether in government, business, the third sector, or international organizations, simply don't know what they are doing when they respond to change." He then states that his "second thesis is that these same people in positions of authority simply cannot know what to do. Their scope of action is so broad, the systems that they deal with so complex, and the number of forces at play so numerous that it is intrinsically beyond their abilities to understand their scope of actions and to anticipate all important outcomes."
And you thought economics was the dismal science. You should meet a futurist.
Mr. Coates then ends on a note that echoes some of the conclusions of our group. "What can one do in a real situation when one cannot know what to do with any reasonable assurance? The answer is straightforward conceptually. The difficulty lies in people having to exhibit an uncommon degree of humility in the face of their own limitations. As we see it, no plan, no project, no program by business, government, the third sector, or international bodies should ever be undertaken as final or definitive. Rather, everything should be undertaken as a continuing, unfolding experiment. The implication is that the experiment truly be an experimentÑ that there be continuous, appropriate data gathering, feedback, interpretation, and alterations in the program or project."
We cannot hope to offer a final solution here. We do hope we've offered the results of some experiments that you may find helpful and can adapt to your own situations. As long as it is several steps forward for each step back, we are making important progress.
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