[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 21 (Wednesday, March 2, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
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[Congressional Record: March 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                E X T E N S I O N   O F   R E M A R K S


   UNIVERSITY-SMALL BUSINESS COLLABORATION: KEY TO AMERICAN ECONOMIC 
                            COMPETITIVENESS

                                 ______


                           HON. GLENN POSHARD

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 2, 1994

  Mr. POSHARD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize one of the most 
important trends in the American economy over the past decade--
collaboration between our Nation's universities and small business 
entrepreneurs. From biotechnology to computer software, these 
collaborations are changing the landscape of American industry, 
generating high-tech economic development and high-wage jobs, and 
enabling American companies to compete and to win in the international 
marketplace.
  In the last Congress, I initiated the legislation which created the 
Small Business Technology Transfer [STTR] Program, which joins together 
universities and small businesses in cooperative R&D projects, in order 
to move innovative ideas from the university laboratory to the 
marketplace. One of the key supporters of that initiative, and of the 
Small Business Innovation Research [SBIR] legislation, was the National 
Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges [NASULGC]. In 
fact, NASULGC, which represents nearly 180 public universities across 
the United States, consistently has risen above narrow political 
interests to embrace the larger vision: That universities and 
businesses have far more to gain by collaborating than by competing, 
and that such collaborations are the way that this Nation can compete 
economically in the global marketplace of the 1990's and beyond.
  Mr. Speaker, the President of NASULGC, Dr. Peter Magrath, delivered 
an eloquent statement of that vision at a recent SBIR/STTR conference. 
His remarks carry an important message for the university community, 
the business community, and Federal policymakers, and I wish to include 
them in the Record.

     Change, Cooperation, and Collaboration Equals Competitiveness

       There is a story of a little boy who was deaf and who never 
     spoke a single word all the seven years of his young life. 
     Nevertheless, his mother cared for him with undiminished love 
     and tenderness. One morning as she brought him his breakfast 
     in the dining room, he suddenly said:
       ``Take this damn lousy oatmeal back to the kitchen,''
       ``Darling,'' she exclaimed, ``you can speak! I'm thrilled, 
     I'm overjoyed, but tell me; why didn't you ever say anything 
     before now?''
       ``Well,'' he said, ``up till now everything has been 
     okay.''
       Roland Schmidt, former GE President and later President of 
     RPI: ``Business corporations are institutions designed by 
     geniuses to be run by idiots; Universities are enterprises 
     designed by idiots to be run by geniuses.''
       ``I have a rotten sense of timing.''--Mark Muriello of Park 
     Ridge, N.J., whose car was recovered intact after the World 
     Trade Center explosion. He had driven to work for the first 
     time in five years.
       The meaning and the lessons to be drawn from the above 
     stories will be explained later, but for the moment let me 
     state my fundamental thesis clearly and directly. All of 
     those participating in the workshop conference are involved 
     in an environment or context that is one of change and 
     opportunity: and that opportunity is a very 
     straightforward one. Cooperation and collaboration among 
     universities, small and medium sized businesses, and 
     national laboratories is not something that we should do 
     because it is ``nice,'' but something that is essential if 
     we are interested in competitiveness and, for those in the 
     business sector, profits. And in furthering these 
     opportunities the association I represent, consisting of 
     nearly 180 of this nation's leading public universities, 
     have much both to gain and to offer.
       Before elaborating this thesis, let us take a look at the 
     research and economic competitiveness context of 1994, in 
     other words where we are today.
       No one has to elaborate on the difficult times our country 
     has experienced in many areas. Neither need we describe in 
     detail the economic difficulties still before us. The litany 
     of concerns is quite dramatic: job losses at all levels of 
     society, the closing of factories, the ``downsizing'' of some 
     of our most heralded corporations, the problems attendant on 
     imbalances in foreign trade, and the loss of whole industries 
     to foreign competitors. Everyone sitting in this room knows 
     as much about it as I do and more. You also know about the 
     reactive turnaround: a good increase in the number of 
     American automobiles sold in the U.S. this year, the millions 
     of new jobs created in industry, and the tightening up of a 
     whole range of American business and industry so that our 
     workers are becoming more productive than ever.
       But the challenges, and opportunities before us are 
     formidable; that is why we are here. Our ability to meet the 
     challenge to be more competitive--and generate profits and 
     new capital--may depend far more on our capacity to change 
     attitudes, our own and others than on questions of markets 
     and productivity and investments. We need to be flexible and 
     creative in our attitudes about each other and the ways in 
     which we can work together for our mutual benefit.
       And ironically, the extraordinary success of the so-called 
     American century in which the United States dominated the 
     world's markets, expanded its universities to become the best 
     in the world, and created a standard of living for its 
     average worker even beyond the dreams of labor and 
     management--ironically, that very success may now be one of 
     our great barriers. One of my senior colleagues, Jerry 
     Roschwalb, recently pointed out to me that, without regard to 
     the specific pros and cons of the health care reform 
     proposals, bringing reform about was going to be a 
     diabolically difficult task simply because the vast majority 
     of Americans had a health insurance and medical system that 
     was pretty good. Their last surgery or the delivery of their 
     newest baby or any other of their costly medical needs had 
     been taken care of rather well. To be sure, the system is 
     expensive, soaring toward the trillion dollar per year mark, 
     and consuming about 14% of the GNP. But for the average Joe 
     Six Pack or his boss, why mess around with it? The fact, of 
     course, is that the health care system does need fixing. And 
     the same is true of the way we have approached the world of 
     American manufacturing and the whole range of areas of 
     technology on which the future of this country is totally 
     dependent.
       Despite some issues and problems, the federal laboratories 
     have done their important and interesting work well according 
     to their agendas. Universities have operated pretty much the 
     same and produced remarkable new knowledge, and industry has 
     operated within industry producing quality products and a 
     high quality of American life. Much of this will continue and 
     much of this works, but a large amount of this work--by the 
     laboratories, the universities, and the businesses--has been 
     done in a self-imposed isolation. Too often the various 
     sectors of American science and technology and business allow 
     themselves the luxury of being cut off from one another 
     rather than working cooperatively with one another.
       It seems to me that the time is past when we are going to 
     be comfortable sharing an inadequate national R&D budget. 
     Competitiveness will not arise from that. The road we are 
     beginning to travel--this meeting is part of it--runs at 
     least in two directions, often more, and all of us are going 
     to have to learn to travel along the road in the company of 
     others. We must learn to work together, and that requires 
     learning to trust each other. And the way that is done is the 
     way every kind of trust in human experience occurs--through 
     experience, and some prudent risk taking. We must learn that 
     it is possible to support one another without losing our core 
     identity. We must learn to use one another in the positive 
     and productive sense of that verb.
       In order to foster that kind of cooperative work and mutual 
     trust we can build on and draw lessons from the philosophy 
     that lay behind the Morrill Act of 1862 creating many of the 
     universities in my associations. I refer of course to the 
     land-grant philosophy that American education must be 
     predominantly public; that it must be focused on research and 
     knowledge that can be applied for practical economic and 
     social purposes; and that it is a prime responsibility of 
     universities to work to further the economic interests of 
     their state and regions. Interestingly enough, that 
     legislation finally emerged in the midst of the worst and 
     most wrenching war in American history--the Civil War. But 
     even then the sponsors of the land-grant legislation saw a 
     future for this county tied, of course, to what was the 
     economic engine and vehicle of that period, which in the 19th 
     Century and for much of this century has been agriculture. 
     Without my going into this in unnecessary detail the tie 
     between the American land-grant and state university and 
     the agricultural sector was purely and simply an economic 
     development model, to use our contemporary language. It is 
     based on the principle of technology transfer from 
     universities to the business of agriculture--but it was 
     and is premised and structured in such a way that fosters 
     mutual collaboration between the agricultural businesses 
     and the universities. This is not, for it could not have 
     worked that way, a one way street in which ``the 
     university'' dictated results and methods to the 
     agricultural sector. And that system works, for American 
     agriculture is still today literally the envy of the world 
     in its productivity and its profitability.
       This land-grand philosophy, which today is enthusiastically 
     embraced by virtually all American state universities whether 
     technically agricultural and land-grant or not, is really at 
     the root of the National Association of State Universities 
     and Land-Grant Colleges. We will soon be 180 universities in 
     our membership, enroll more than three million students, 
     produce more than 70 percent of all engineers in this country 
     and an equal percentage of all university-based engineering 
     research, and represent an enormous component of the research 
     capability of this nation in science, biology, biotechnology, 
     medicine and medical technology, and in virtually all areas 
     of scientific research--many with a practical or applied 
     bent. The whole purpose of this education and research is to 
     serve economic and social interest, and to extend that 
     knowledge (our extension or outreach programs) to society.
       The record speaks for itself, but it may be worth noting 
     that, in recently reorganizing itself, my association created 
     six commissions that approach educational issues on an 
     integrated and interdisciplinary, basis. I will note three of 
     these commissions: one on outreach and technology transfer; 
     one on the incredibly exciting and unfolding world of 
     information technology; and one dealing with food, the 
     environment, and renewable resources. Moreover, my 
     association has put its practical foot down to support the 
     words and philosophy it promotes. We have been early and 
     strong supporters of SBIR, STTR, the EPSCOR program of NSF. 
     Moreover, NASULGC and I personally have been strong 
     supporters of the National Science Foundation's proposed new 
     thrust, strongly endorsed by leading members of Congress, 
     toward strategic research that can be used for economic 
     developments and technology transfer purposes.
       If we are going to improve our nation's economy in all of 
     its manifestations it seems strikingly clear to me, and I 
     hope to you, that we need a national commitment that goes 
     beyond words and reflection, and that involved all of us--the 
     university community, directors of laboratories from all 
     sectors, universities, government, and industry, so that we 
     can build a science and technology network and population 
     relevant to the challenges, not of yesterday, but of today 
     and tomorrow. But as with all worthy challenges and 
     opportunities, this is a lot easier said than done.
       In many ways, this country and the communities represented 
     by you have done before what needs to be done again. If you 
     read the various books about the Manhattan Project you come 
     across suspicion, internal competition, self-doubt among the 
     leadership, failure and more failure, and the combination of 
     extraordinary intellect. (And by the way, a substantial 
     number of those fellows were recent immigrants from the 
     continent where evil madness had exploited and threatened 
     their very lives. Perhaps the concern in some circles in 
     American life today over the numbers of foreign students in 
     our graduate schools may be not entirely directed in wise 
     directions). It has been forgotten, unfortunately, that 
     radar, sometimes called the key to victory in World War II, 
     was created by scientists and engineers on the campus of MIT 
     in an exercise that involved all of the entities represented 
     here today. And since I represent the 72 land-grand 
     institutions, along with their state university sisters, I 
     again remind us of what was accomplished by American 
     agriculture in the first half of this century. Those 
     accomplishments have benefitted virtually the entire world, 
     and they literally grew out of university laboratories, were 
     taken to the fields of individual farmers, and then to the 
     production lines of the American business. Those farmers were 
     engaged in small and medium sized business, and initially, by 
     the way, there were attitudes of distrust and 
     miscommunication that had to be overcome by the university 
     researchers and what were then known as the county extension 
     agents. But those suspicions and misunderstandings were 
     overcome to everyone's benefit, and the same is absolutely 
     possible today as we contemplate collaborations between 
     business and universities and laboratory researchers to deal 
     with the challenges of technology and productive business 
     innovations.
       What can we see in the near future? Allow me a metaphor: I 
     would like to see around the research-based campuses of this 
     country a necklace of entrepreneurial businesses offering an 
     easy and visible test to the goals we seek here. We need to 
     have a solid core of alumni who understand that 
     entrepreneurship must be a national priority, and that 
     placing top-notch graduate students is not to be left to the 
     proverbial somebody else. At the heart of all of this 
     activity will be small businesses as has been the case for a 
     long time. The kinds of progress that we make will certainly 
     have its imprint on the major corporations of this country, 
     but the swift progress and the quick evolution of new ideas 
     will take place in small businesses that have intensely woven 
     ties to laboratories and university laboratories.
       Since this is a Western Regional Meeting, a special word 
     needs to be directed to those states that so far appear to 
     have too often bypassed research and development. As a 
     consequent, there may be instances where universities have to 
     substitute for small businesses that are simply not there and 
     provide the leadership that will lead to the creation of new 
     small businesses. I am not sure that anyone has an exact 
     formula, but I am sure that there is not just one formula. 
     Every instance may have to come out in its own fashion.
       I deeply applaud those people here who have taken the 
     regional approach to make two plus two equal seven. That's 
     what happens in collaboration. One of the problems that 
     universities have been finding of late is that if they all 
     reach forward to become Berkeleys and Michigans or even some 
     of those private institutions you have heard of in the East 
     and West it requires that they have specialists and experts 
     in every field of every sort in every institution. That is 
     how we operated during most of the Cold War period. But when 
     the country discovers that it does not have the funds to 
     underwrite research in say, 150 chemistry departments and 
     that it would be better if there were only 100 first-rate 
     departments, we have a problem. Ideally, those schools 
     without the chemistry department strength could have other 
     departments of excellence and, through collaboration, 
     institutions could all be great universities but not all 
     great comprehensive universities. This has not occurred, 
     although it is beginning.
       But here in this western region (and other regions of the 
     United States) there is the possibility and opportunity--if 
     attitudes can be unfrozen and trust developed--for key 
     participants from our universities, from the business sector, 
     from the national laboratories, and from state and local 
     governments to forge the collaborative and cooperative 
     linkages that will enable your states and regions to attract 
     resources that are essential, to develop and market products 
     that are needed and will generate profits, and to strengthen 
     the economy of both your state and ultimately the nation.
       If I have one plea to make is that we work toward building 
     trust and partnerships in this arena of economic 
     collaboration and technology transfer, for that is the only 
     road to attracting resources from the federal government (and 
     for that matter the states), and it is the best vehicle for 
     developing creative new ideas and products. We may all, in 
     some ways, be strangers to each other. Universities, I can 
     assure you, can be strange and baffling places, populated 
     with many interesting and sometimes perverse (I did not say 
     perverted!) characters. But there is undoubtedly strangeness 
     or at least uniqueness in the world of business and the 
     profit world, even if it is dressed in a better cut suit with 
     a better matching tie. What is ultimately important is that 
     we recognize that individual talented people from the world 
     of universities, business, the laboratories, and yes, even 
     government, can be heroic and accomplish wonders if they have 
     a vision that is larger than themselves.
       Ladies and gentlemen the context I described earlier is a 
     tough one. We still face enormous economic problems in this 
     country and dramatic competitive challenges from our 
     friendly, and sometimes not so friendly, competitors around 
     the world. Ultimately I suppose it does not matter whether 
     the world of universities and small business and laboratories 
     come together out of fear of the alternatives, or simply 
     because it makes good sense in an idealistic fashion. As is 
     so often the case among we humans, our greatest obstacles are 
     usually right in front of us--ourselves, our hesitations, our 
     fears, our desire to be left at peace to do things our way as 
     we have always been doing it. But that option ultimately has 
     never been granted any generation, and it certainly will not 
     do for a country and a people that in their best ideals still 
     are optimistic and look toward economic growth and social 
     improvement.
       Remember those little stories with which I began my 
     presentation? For me at least I draw some lessons from them. 
     There was the boy who did not like the damn lousy oatmeal, 
     because ``everything'' was not now okay. I suggest that 
     everything today in our business and economic world is not 
     okay--and that therefore thoughtful action and steps of the 
     kind before this conference are essential to our mutual well 
     being.
       I quoted Roland Schmidt's dig at business corporations and 
     universities, the clever comment about geniuses and idiots. I 
     am persuaded that both businesses and universities are 
     complex institutions that often defy even geniuses in 
     leading, but in reality the lesson is that there are few, if 
     any, idiots in any sector and probably even fewer geniuses. 
     But the lesson is that there are many good smart men and 
     women, and if they can deal with complexities and challenges, 
     we can have good business that make profits and good 
     universities and laboratories that contribute to our economy 
     and society.
       And, finally, there was that story about the man with the 
     rotten sense of timing in driving his car for the first time 
     in five years to the World Trade Center. There is a real 
     lesson here: timing is important-in sports, in lovemaking, in 
     education, and in business. And this is the time, right now, 
     not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, for change and 
     cooperation and technology research collaboration on behalf 
     of this nation's economy and its economic competitiveness.
       This is the moment; this is opportunity; this is the time. 
     Let's get on with it.

                          ____________________