The Socio-Economic Importance of Scientific Research To Canada

The Socio-Economic Importance of Scientific Research to Canada Page 31© David A. Wolfe and Ammon SalterTechnological Problem–Solving:Publicly–funded research also contributes to the economy by helping industrial practitionerssolve complex technological problems. As many firms in complex and technologicallydemanding industries draw from a variety of technologies, public support acts as a wide poolof resources for these firms to draw upon (Patel and Pavitt 1994). Vincenti's discussion ofengineering knowledge suggests that advanced engineering knowledge draws from the publicsupport base indirectly, through the provision of trained problem–solvers and the backgroundsupply of knowledge (Vincenti 1990).The Yale Study, which is based on a survey of 650 US industrial R&D directors, provides themost systematic analysis of the benefits of basic research. 22Industries where the generalrelevance of science was judged to be important to current technological activities were threetimes as numerous as those where specific university research was judged to be important.The authors noted the difference between the role of science as a pool of knowledge and therole of university research for firms. Overall academic research in a field is reported as muchless important to recent technological advance than is the general body of science in that field.The discrepancy between the measured relevance of generic science (a pool ofknowledge) and that of university science (new results) is greater for basic than forapplied research because research in applied sciences and engineering disciplines isguided to a large extent by perceptions of practical problems, and new findings oftenfeed directly into their solutions. . . . this by no means implies that new findings infundamental physics, for example, are not relevant to industrial innovation. Rather, weread our findings as indicating that advances in fundamental scientific knowledge havetheir influence on industrial R&D largely through two routes. One . . . is throughinfluencing the general understandings and techniques that industrial scientists andengineers, particularly those whose industrial training is recent, bring to their jobs.The other is through their incorporation in the applied sciences and engineeringdisciplines and their influence on research in those fields” (Klevorick et al. 1995, pp.196–7).22 The Yale Survey was conducted in 1982. It was based on a mailed questionnaire sent to the R&D managers oflarge American firms divided into 130 sectors. The survey received a 54 per cent response rate.31