1 Links and Impacts: Survey Results on the Influence of Public Research on Industrial R&D Wesley M. Cohen Carnegie Mellon University Richard R. Nelson Columbia University John P. Walsh Univ. of Illinois at Chicago

2 Method and Data Administered the “Carnegie Mellon” survey in 1994 to the managers of R&D labs in the U.S. manufacturing sector Asked to answer questions with reference to “focus industry” of their lab Responses received from 1478 labs, yielding response rate of 54%

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4 Overall importance of channels (% resps. scoring moderately important or higher) Publications 41% Informal information exchange35 Public meetings or conferences34 Consulting32 Contract research 21 Hiring of recent graduates20 Joint or cooperative ventures18 Patents18 Licenses 10 Personnel exchange 6

5 Drugs: Different from the rest Public research, especially in basic science, has greatest influence overall on drug industry Buyers play subordinate role as source of new projects (27% of drug resps. rate buyers “most important” vs. 66% overall; lowest) Mfg. operations play subordinate role as info. source for project completion (23% of drug resps. rate mfg. ops. most important vs. 33% overall; in lowest quartile) Patents and Licenses are a key information channel in drugs--because it is the industry where patents are most effective by far.