552 



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 



Recommendation: ONR should continue to fund and nurture long-range marine 

 research and technology development. These efforts should be coupled with the 

 education and training of scientific and engineering personnel in ocean science 

 and technology. 



STATUS OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AT ONR 



Finding: Federal agencies are mandated by public law to transfer technology 

 (see Appendix C). The transfer of ocean science and technology within the Navy 

 and to other government agencies, and to a large extent, to academia, appears to 

 be adequate. Technology transfer to the nonmilitary commercial sector, by con- 

 trast, is clearly inadequate. This inadequacy is particuliu"ly evident in the transfer 

 of technology to major U.S. corporations that lack a history of involvement with 

 ONR and to small companies (less than 100 employees and less than $30 million 

 in revenues) of all types. 



Representatives of marine industries indicated to the committee that there is 

 little direct involvement by ONR in commercial offshore R&D activity. An 

 examination of the few measures of performance available (e.g., participation by 

 ONR in cooperative R&D agreements, number of patents licensed) seems to 

 support this view (see Chapter 3). 



Recommendation: ONR should allocate sufficient resources to ensure the suc- 

 cess of technology transfer to the domestic nonmilitary sector in ocean science 

 and technology. 



TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AT ONR: THE ORGANIZATION 



Finding: Even though an organizational structure apparently exists to facilitate 

 domestic technology transfer by ONR, the existing process is primarily ad hoc 

 and reactive rather than proactive. 



Industries that do not have a connection to ONR find it difficult and costly to 

 gain access to information available at ONR. The perception is that there is 

 valuable technology at ONR but that existing mechanisms are not adequate to 

 promote the development of this technology for commercial purposes (see Chap- 

 ter 3). For these and other reasons, simply introducing financial or personnel 

 management poUcies may fail to stimulate the technology interchange desired. 

 There is a need for a new organizational mechanism that acknowledges the pri- 

 vate sector as the best judge of what technology it needs, at what cost, and on 

 what timetable (see Chapter 5). ONR does not possess the experience and per- 

 spective required to make such determinations without significant input from the 

 user community. 



