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Commerce Taking Up Need to Commercialize More Federal R&D
Describing the nation’s innovation system as broken, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke yesterday said the Department of Commerce will be “working hard to find solutions” that move more federally funded R&D into the commercial market.
“Even in areas where we are allocating enough funding for R&D, we’re not doing a good enough job getting these ideas into the marketplace, particularly through entrepreneurs.
“For much of the last century, the way we moved federal R&D out of our labs and into the marketplace worked well enough… It wasn't a terribly efficient system, but for a time, it didn't really matter, because the United States was the unquestioned leader in innovation…
“But those days are over – and today, too many of our research ideas never make it out of the lab, and if they do, they get lost in the “valley of death,” where a high-risk idea doesn't have the resources or the funding to make it to market.
“The United States has not adjusted to a new global marketplace where foreign countries and foreign companies have the ability to outpace their American counterparts.
“It’s not tenable for the United States to continue with the status quo. In a world where innovation is critical to U.S. competitiveness, we must do everything in our power to optimize commercialization that stems from our nation’s vast research investments.”
While his remarks talk broadly for all federal R&D, it appears Sec. Locke’s attention at first will be on federal research conducted at universities. He will host an invitation-only forum on Feb 24 to “discuss potential collaborative steps that the Commerce Department and administration can take working with universities and industry to increase and accelerate commercialization of federal R&D in universities.”
Sec. Locke’s comments are available at: http://www.commerce.gov/NewsRoom/SecretarySpeeches/prod01_008812.
His related Jan 7 speech to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology is available at: http://www.commerce.gov/NewsRoom/SecretarySpeeches/PROD01_008778.
Questions regarding the forum should be directed to entrepreneurship@doc.gov. The press release is available at: http://www.commerce.gov/NewsRoom/PressReleases_FactSheets/PROD01_008813