The semiconductor industry - Model for industry/university/government cooperation

Research Technology Management

Volumn 40, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 46-54

  Rea, Donald G ^a,b,c,d,e,f   Brooks, Harvey ^a,g,h,i,j   Burger, Robert M ^a,k,l,m   LaScala, Richard ^k,n  

^a Jet Propulsion Laboratory ^*

^b NASA HEADQUARTERS   (United States)

^c MITRE CORPORATION   (United States)

^d GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^e MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

^f UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^g HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^h National Academy of Engineering

ⁱ NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES   (United States)

^j Natl Acad's Comm Sci Pub Plcy

^k SEMICONDUCTOR RESEARCH CORPORATION   (United States)

^l Semiconduct Indust Assoc Natl T

^m BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

ⁿ UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

more..

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMPETITION; ENGINEERING EDUCATION; INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT; INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH; INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY; MICROELECTRONICS; PUBLIC POLICY; RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT; SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS;

INDUSTRY MODEL; RESEARCH FUNDING; SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY;

SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICE MANUFACTURE;

EID: 0031191825     PISSN: 08956308     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08956308.1997.11671142     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. With the development of the multinational company, the definition of a U.S. company is somewhat subjective. For our purposes, we consider the minimum requirements to consist of business headquarters and lead R&D laboratory located in the U.S.
2. Naik, Gautam. "Corporate Research: How Much is it Worth?." The Wall Street Journal. May 22 1995, p. B1.
3. Fusfeld, Herbert I. Industry's Future: Changing Patterns of Industrial Research. American Chemical Society Press, 1994.
4. "Microelectronics: Vision for the 21st Century." Semiconductor Industry Association, 1994, p. 3.
5. Nomination for the National Medal of Technology, Semiconductor Research Corporation, December 15, 1994.
6. Moore, Gordon E. "Some Personal Perspectives on Research in the Semiconductor Industry." In Engines of Innovation: U.S. Industrial Innovation at the End of an Era, Richard Rosenbloom and William Spencer (Eds), Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA, 1996, pp. 165-174.
7. Howell, Thomas R., Brent R. Bartlett and Warren Davis. "Creating Advantage: Semiconductors and Government Industrial Policy in the 1990s," Semiconductor Industry Association and Dewey Ballantine, 1992.
8. "The National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors," Semiconductor Industry Association, 1994.
9. There appears to be no reliable evidence as to the relative importance of technological improvement and changing exchange rate as the source of improvement in the U.S. world market share. A source at one extreme of opinion, W. L. Givens (10), claims that Japanese semiconductor manufacturers have continued to bring down their costs much faster than U.S. manufacturers and that this has been accomplished almost entirely by means of improvements in technology and work organization. A somewhat different view is taken by Richard Lester (11). He estimates that ". . . at least three quarters of the gain in America's export competitiveness is due to the weakness of the dollar. . .". However, improvements in ". . . productivity, quality, and innovation" have been significant and constitute the remainder.
10. Givens, W.L. "Economic Cocaine: America's Exchange Rate Addiction." Foreign Affairs, vol. 74, no. 4, 1995, pp. 17-21.
11. Lester, Richard. "Introduction." Proceedings of the International Conference on the Future of Industry in Advanced Societies. Industrial Performance Center, M.I.T., April, 1995.
12. This judgment is not universally shared, at least insofar as SEMATECH is concerned. Scott Callon (13) has analyzed several industry consortia in Japan, and found that the majority have not been effective. He has also looked at SEMATECH and questions whether the total investment of resources might not have been more beneficial if it had been spent on university research.
13. Callon, Scott. Divided Sun: MITI and the Breakdown of Japanese High-tech Industrial Policy, Stanford University Press, 1996.
14. We are aware of over 20 industrial consortia whose objectives are to develop technology for their respective industries. They vary in the involvement of the federal government; e.g., SEMATECH, until recently, received half of its funding from the government, while the DeepStar Project, developing technology for deep sea drilling for the petroleum industry, has been entirely funded by its member companies. The consortia also vary in where the work is carried out; e.g., SEMATECH uses its own facility in addition to various companies and universities, but most consortia do not have a dedicated facility and use a combination of industry, national laboratory and university resources.
15. Several of the industrial technology consortia do have university participation. However, the number of universities is limited and there are no documents comparable to the Technology Roadmap to guide university personnel in preparing research proposals. In addition, universities have formed groups to develop programs, including R&D, to address a specific theme. A recent example is the National Coalition for Manufacturing Leadership Web (home page address http://web.mit.edu/lfm/ncml/)