Technology and the Canadian Forest-Product Industries ... - ArtSites

countries is conducted in-house testifies to a widespread belief that asignificant proportion of the returns on in-house R&D is appropriableand is not transferable at negligible social COSP3On the other hand cooperative R&D has many drawbacks. Themain one is that it cannot provide firm-specific or in some respectseven nation-specific advantages, which means that cooperative R&Dleads to adaptive and dependent technological strategies. It is costlyand risky to transfer technology: a cooperative R&D lab will not succeedunless firms are equipped to absorb its research results. In theUnited Kingdom and the United States, association laboratories inmany industries have only achieved mixed success. There are alsolimits to how much Canadian forest-product firms are willing to payfor cooperative R&D: Feric, Forintek, and in some ways, evenPaprican, still rely on government support. In the absence of in-houseR&D, especially in wood harvesting and wood processing, there arestrong pressures, particularly on Feric and Forintek, to be moredevelopmental and concerned with relatively short-term projects.Attitudes toward Government R&D PolicyAll survey respondents in forest-product firms and equipment supplierswith in-house R&D programs thought the government shouldsupport R&D. Nobody claimed that incentives were crucial to R&D,but they did regard them as useful. All respondents considered taxincentives, including tax credits, to be effective forms of R&D assistance.MacMillan Bloedel has also argued in favour of a cash advanceoption in years when firms have little or no taxable income." Feelingswere mixed regarding government grants: R& D managers withinforest-product firms did not think they were effective; however, amajority of R&D managers within equipment suppliers thoughtotherwise.The use of R&D grants available from government agencies hasbeen minimal among forest-product firms with in-house R&D groups,partly because the application process takes too much time, and partlybecause of concerns about secrecy. Government grants for R&Dare, however, more important to equipment suppliers, although someapplicants have not been pleased with their experience. One largerfirm had unsuccessfully attempted to obtain four grants from federalgovernment agencies. It argued bitterly that R&D granting programsstrongly favour smaller companies, a bias that it considered to be awaste of time. No doubt this attitude was influenced by the fact thattwo of its former employees had received government support whenthey recently left to form their own company as a direct competitor.79