January 2005

As the walls of ignorance fall demand for research rises

The physical and political barriers that used to separate nations and R&D co-operation no longer create critical obstacles. For industry, the most significant benefit of collaboration is wider and faster access to new research.

Future generations of scientists and engineers will need to function productively in an international environment where boundaries are no longer an issue, says Sharon Elder...

Many of the barriers that used to separate nations no longer exist. The Iron Curtain is no more and we have overcome distance, time, and disparity of information. Researchers can now collaborate though divided by oceans or entire continents.

While there are always powerful negative forces working to drive countries apart, more positive forces are working to shrink the world and bring people closer together. In the light of our growing dependence on a globalised economy that is an important trend.

Nevertheless, funding projects involving cross-border collaboration can be difficult, with a multitude of funding bodies each serving mainly national interests. But not only has international networking become extremely common, it has come to be recognised as an essential part of the infrastructure required to support research in a global environment.

Industry must always be on the lookout for opportunities for critically important co-operation in basic research. Research activities within an organisation are rarely limited to a single individual operating in isolation. Instead, these activities integrate sophisticated technology into products that require collaboration between many individuals. Collaboration can give companies access to a pool of ideas, and facilitates contact with researchers at the forefront of their fields.

There are a number of reasons why research collaboration has been growing over the last 20 to 30 years. Conferences, seminars, expert discussions, proceedings, books and recommendations, and not least national and international collaborations are all tools to distribute knowledge for the advancement of research.

Waves of innovation

Nearly instantaneous availability of newly published discoveries and inventions, rapid and cheap personal communication, as well as remote participation in scientific events via such means as videoconferencing are all part of computer-mediated communication advances.

Without leaving their desks, participants can converse, chat online, share applications, annotate documents, and in some cases see each other through web-based video cameras. For developing countries, this has facilitated participation in world-class research, in step with activities in the developed world.

A second factor encouraging greater collaboration has been the substantial fall in the cost of travel and of personal communication. The dramatic reduction in transport costs means that producing close to your customers is no longer crucial. During the 1950s and into the 1960s, travel options were mainly by sea or rail. The cost of sea shipping of a short ton US decreased from $95 in 1920 to $29 in 1990. Cheaper airfares, significant technological improvements (such as the jet engine), express shipping, and flights now readily available between most major cities are additional contributing factors.

Another significant wave of innovation involves information technologies, with the rapid decrease of computer costs since their initial introduction (mainframes) in the 1960s.

Telecommunications, however, are the sector where costs have decreased the most. Until the mid-1980s international networking was extremely expensive and thought to be difficult to justify, due to the relatively high cost of telecommunications services. By 1990, an international phone call averaged between 1 per cent and 5 per cent of its 1940 cost.

Within the space of a very few years, international networking has not only become extremely common but is also seen as an essential part of the infrastructure required to support everyday research activities. This is further enhanced by the fact that societies are becoming more multi-lingual.

But as the world has become "smaller" through improved communication, it has also become "faster" for the same reason. Customers are demanding faster answers in return for making substantial contributions to the cost of research. One of the best ways to ensure success is to build a committed high-performance project team in which individual members can contribute their best.

To succeed in today's fast-evolving markets with very short product cycles, basic and applied research as well as development work should be carried out in parallel rather than as a long chain. This should enhance the role of basic research and also require closer contacts between industry and research communities.

More networking needed

For the past few months, the Center for Innovative Sintered Products (CISP) at Pennsylvania State University has been mapping and evaluating the increase in industrial research requests.

At the international level the requests are almost equally divided among the industrial sector and other research institutions geographically as far apart as Korea, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Japan, Spain, Liechtenstein, Ukraine, China, Singapore, UK, Denmark, Sweden, and Canada.

Sustaining innovation is a key factor since precapitalisation for research is the driver. This is no surprise if one understands that the motives behind research and development are to become more profitable, expand into new markets, or commercialise research.

Most of the university-industry sintered materials research funds throughout the late 1980s and into the early 1990s were in powder injection moulding (PIM). From 1996 to 1999, the focus moved to rapid prototyping.

As these areas mature, we are seeing an interest from non-traditional users in areas such as thermal management materials, electric vehicles, fuel cells, biomedical components, hard coatings, nanoscale powders, computer modelling, lead replacement, powder-polymers, micro-miniature devices, and applications of ultra high velocity, compaction, and pressure.

It is now necessary to train successive generations of engineers to be strongly networked and able to produce goods and services that find demand both in the global marketplace and at home.

The Author: Sharon Elder is executive director of the Center for Innovative Sintered Products at Pennsylvania State University.