Elsevier

Research Policy

Volume 41, Issue 10, December 2012, Pages 1697-1702
Research Policy

Public R&D and social challenges: What lessons from mission R&D programs?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2012.07.011Get rights and content

Highlights

► Explains the context and the motivations for this Special Issue. ► Provides a summary of each paper of the Special Issue. ► Draws on the papers some guidelines for policy design.

Introduction

Societies today face a number of formidable challenges, many of them global in scope. These include adverse climate change, devastating diseases that are not yet under control, uncontrolled population growth in many low-income countries combined with stagnant or declining populations in many high-income economies, rapid urbanization in low-income economies that places stress on the provision of public services, and others. Although the development of new technologies alone will not solve any of these problems, for some at least the creation and adoption of more effective and appropriate technologies is a necessary part of any solution. It is also evident that market forces alone cannot induce all of the R&D investment that is needed for these solutions, and that government programs to aid in the development and deployment of the relevant technologies are needed.

In response to these challenges, a number of policy experts and policymakers have argued for public R&D programs structured similarly to the U.S. government-sponsored Manhattan Project or Project Apollo.1 Reflecting their focus on the achievement of specific objectives in support of governmental goals, these historic programs are examples of a much broader class of publicly funded programs in “mission-oriented research.” Although the proposals for a “new Manhattan or Apollo project” generally focus on public responses to climate-change challenges, similar mission-oriented initiatives could attract support in responding to other global challenges such as those mentioned earlier.

We have two motives for organizing this special issue of Research Policy on mission oriented public R&D programs. First, we believe Manhattan and Apollo are not the right models for new programs aimed at the challenges we now face. Nevertheless, mission-oriented R&D programs can be of great value if they are well designed to fit the particular challenge and the context. Second, we believe that familiarity with a range of existing mission oriented R&D programs can provide useful guidance for the design of new programs aimed at these challenges. The papers included in this special issue can help provide that familiarity, including an understanding of the factors that have influenced the design and goals of these different programs, and contributed to their successes and failures.

In spite of the historic size and importance of many central government mission-oriented R&D programs within the OECD, current discussions of R&D policy responses to today's social challenges have proceeded with little awareness of these programs, except for Manhattan and Apollo. Much of the economics literature on these policy issues focuses on public support of R&D as a response to “market failures.” Although market failures are clearly present in many of the current challenges, economists have tended to overlook the significance of R&D support programs that are focused on specific objectives, in spite of the size and significance within most industrial-economy public R&D budgets of these programs. More generally, scholars writing about science and technology policy have largely focused on measures intended to stimulate overall economic growth. And scholars doing research on the role and nature of public R&D in support of particular sectors and objectives like national defense, or public health, or agriculture have tended to publish their work in specialized journals that are unfamiliar to most readers of Research Policy.

The societal challenges that have triggered recent calls for expanded public support for R&D are very diverse, and the design of a program concerned with any of these challenges must take into account the specific characteristics of the challenge and the context within which technological responses will be developed and deployed. In spite of this diversity, however, the societal challenges highlighted earlier share a common characteristic – they are all very different than the challenges faced and met by Manhattan and Apollo. These programs were aimed to develop a particular technological capability, and the achievement of their technological objective signaled the end of the program.

Almost all of today's challenges are broader in nature and require efforts that are structured for the long run. Another key contrast stems from the fact that the user of the technologies that Manhattan and Apollo created was the government agency that funded the work. Most of today's challenges will require the actions of many parties, private as well as governmental, many of whom may provide little if any R&D funding, yet who will decide whether or not to deploy new technologies created by such initiatives. And unlike Manhattan and Apollo, new technologies developed to meet many current challenges will have to compete with technologies that already are in use and that have the support of powerful economic interests. Finally, all of the funding for the R&D in the Manhattan and Apollo programs was provided by the federal government. But for current societal challenges, publicly funded R&D, although vital, will be only one of a number of sources of R&D investment. In particular, private funding will be essential to both technology development and the necessarily widespread adoption of technological solutions.

The papers in this special issue examine mission-oriented R&D programs in health, agriculture, energy, and defense, while others focus on specific policy instruments that are common within many mission-oriented R&D programs. The mission-oriented R&D programs in defense, agriculture, health, and energy with the partial exception of defense-related R&D, are themselves quite different from Manhattan and Apollo. None of these mission-oriented R&D programs will serve as a perfect model for the program design needed for dealing with the present challenges, although some elements of these programs may be useful components of future mission-oriented R&D programs. But knowledge about these kinds of programs, the basis for differences in their contrasting design, and their apparent strengths and weaknesses, can inform thinking about how to deal with the various challenges.

Section snippets

Summaries of the papers in the special issue

Our discussion above stressed the diversity among mission-oriented R&D support programs. These programs differ in the nature of the mission, the kinds of R&D that are supported, the institutional characteristics of the R&D performers, and the intended principal beneficiaries. The first three case studies in this special issue are concerned with defense R&D, support of agricultural R&D, and the research support programs of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The differences across these

Guidelines for policy design2

We believe that there are some general lessons that can be drawn from the experience with mission oriented programs and policy instruments discussed in these papers. Mission-oriented R&D programs for future societal challenges must support the development and deployment of many different technologies that will be employed in a diverse array of sectors throughout the world. Such public programs should focus on long-term support for the development and improvement of relevant technologies, rather

Acknowledgements

We thank Swissnex-Boston for having hosted and supported the initial meeting of contributors to this project in Cambridge (July 2010). The second meeting in Lausanne (May 2011) was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (International Exploratory Workshop – 135896).

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