Communications of the ACM
The Seeds That Federal Money Can Plant
Peter Lee
CMU
Government support is key to facilitating new ideas that are harvested by the private sector, creating companies and jobs, according to a recent U.S. National Research Council (NRC) report.
The report examined eight computing technologies and found that the portion of revenue at 30 well-known corporations that could be traced back to the seed research backed by government agencies totaled almost $500 billion a year.
"If you take any major information technology company today, from Google to Intel to Qualcomm to Apple to Microsoft and beyond, you can trace the core technologies to the rich synergy between federally funded universities and industry research and development," says Microsoft's Peter Lee, who led the NRC committee that produced the report.
However, government research funding is threatened by the Budget Control Act, which is scheduled to take effect in January, calls for across-the-board cuts in discretionary spending. A recent American Association for the Advancement of Science study found that federal spending on research and development would be trimmed by more than $12 billion in 2013, and the National Science Foundation would have its budget cut by more than $450 million.
From New York Times
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