Global Innovation
Today’s advances in science and technology cannot
be handled by one country alone; they require international
cooperation.
By David Alan Grier
I often receive quizzical looks when I tell friends
that I work at GW’s Center for International Science
and Technology Policy at the Elliott School of International
Affairs. Some of them note that “international
science and technology policy” does not seem to
be one of those universal academic subjects, like literature
or physics. Others have asked how science and technology
can be international, as science should be science no
matter where it is located.
I confess that I had some of the same questions when
I became affiliated with the center four years ago. In
the intervening time, I have learned that researchers
in the center are dealing with perhaps the most fundamental
problem of modern life: how best to use knowledge about
the physical world and new technologies to support economies,
countries, and peoples.
The center is home to eight faculty, 35 graduate students
in our master’s program in international science
and technology policy, several graduate research assistants,
and a pair of staff members. It began operations in 1968,
at the height of the American effort to place an astronaut
on the moon, and the future of spaceflight was an early
subject of study at the center. In 1970, John Logsdon
joined the political science department at GW. Logsdon
had written his doctoral dissertation on the decision
to send astronauts to the moon. Within two years of arriving
at GW, he had become the space expert, a trusted commentator
on the American space program. His first television appearance
was in July 1972, shortly before the end of the Apollo
flights. And in 1987, he established the Space Policy
Institute, now incorporated within the Center for International
Science and Technology Policy.
The center has five regular faculty members: John Logsdon,
Nick Vonortas, Bob Rycroft, Henry Farrell, and myself.
In addition, there are three research faculty members,
two of whom are part of the Space Policy Institute: Ray
Williamson, Henry Hertzfeld, and Caroline Wagner. The
center also hosts 8-10 visiting post-doctoral scholars
per year, who come from universities and government institutes
in Europe, North America, and Asia, and a visiting foreign
service officer from the State Department.
The center oversees a master’s program in International
Science and Technology Policy for the Elliott School
and advises students in the School of Public Policy and
Public Administration who are preparing doctoral dissertations
on subjects in science and technology policy. It is located
on the 4th floor of 1957 E Street, the new building that
holds the Elliott School.
One anchor of the center’s research is our work
with Korea, a country whose government has a long history
of working with the center. We have research agreements
with the major Korean research institutions, including
its ministry of science and technology, its national
science foundation, and the science and technology policy
center that advises the Korean prime minister.
For my part in the global marketplace, I receive about
60 e-mail messages each day concerning a journal devoted
to the history of computing and digital communication
that I edit. My assistant editor is in Norwich, England,
the production manager is in Long Beach, Calif., and
a key department editor works in Osaka, Japan.
Many government science and technology officers have
at least some training in economics. The center’s
director, Nicholas Vonortas, also is an economist who
does research for a dozen or so institutions, including
the European Union. His most recent research has centered
on innovation networks, formerly called strategic alliances;
basically, he studies how scientists, universities, and
companies work together to support scientific advances
and technological innovation.
One example is the consortium that builds Airbus airliners.
A network that includes engineering firms, financiers,
manufacturers, material suppliers, and computer programmers,
it is far too complicated to be managed by one person
or even by one country. The center has had a series of
grants from the National Science Foundation since the
early 1990s to support work on innovation networks.
Another important area of center activity is R&D
program evaluation. A good part of the center’s
recent work in this area is for the Office of Science
in the Department of Energy. “We research a new
approach called real options, which is an investment
approach. We examine how an organization selects among
very uncertain investment options, because technology
is uncertain,” Vonortas says. “The Office
of Science, along with the NSF, is probably the largest
source of funds for basic research in the country, so
they support the project.”
One of Vonortas’ recent projects was a report
he wrote for the European Commission. This past fall,
he took part in a panel organized by the EC to evaluate
all European research programs. “It’s a very
visible activity in Europe,” Vonortas explains. “Every
four years, the EU negotiates a new framework for its
technology policy. In order to start negotiating the
framework, there needs to be a report evaluating the
achievements and disappointments of the previous four
years. The work is always done with a high-level panel,
which meets in Brussels.” Under
the chairmanship of Erkki Ormala, a vice president of
Finnish cell phone manufacturer Nokia, the panel delivered
the report in December to help set EU technology policy
through the year 2010.
Vonortas also works closely with Bob Rycroft, a political
scientist with the center. Rycroft approaches science
policy from the point of view of complexity theory, which
involves looking at large, complicated organizations,
such as Vonortas’ innovation networks, and trying
to understand how they operate.
Much of Vonortas’ and Rycroft’s research
involves large databases that Vonortas has been assembling
with financial support from the NSF. These databases
connect information about technical collaborations with
data that includes millions of patent citations. “These
databases took Nick years to construct,” Rycroft
says. They have been created with the help of graduate
students who work at the center.
Every month, on the second Wednesday, the center sponsors
a Technology and Innovation Seminar, which is our big
public forum to which some 600 people are invited. The
most recent seminar speaker was Carolyn Wagner, our newest
research professor, who comes to us from the Netherlands
office of the RAND Corp. and studies innovation. Another
recent seminar dealt with the technologies that will
allow us to commercially exploit the moon. A third analyzed
the process of planning technologies for tomorrow’s
markets, a process we call “technology road mapping.”
Through such seminars and through their research, the
center’s faculty continues to grapple with the
question of how best to guide science and technology
in the 21st century.
David Alan Grier is associate professor of international
science and technology policy and associate dean for
academic programs in GW’s Elliott School of International
Affairs.
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