572 



24 EXPANDING THE USES OF NA VAL OCEAN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



annual revenues less than $30 million or fewer than 100 employees). Evidence of 

 this lack of involvement appears in several areas listed below. The committee did 

 not develop, nor does it recommend, specific values for the metrics listed below 

 (only a subset of potentially useful measures), and it did not conduct quantitative 

 analysis of such measures. Such standard setting should be conducted by ONR 

 upper management. ONR's performance in technology transfer should be com- 

 parable to the overall performance of DOD in technology transfer (i.e., the tech- 

 nology transfer efforts of any DOD R&D program, as gauged by any given 

 metric, should be roughly proportional to that program's share of the overall 

 DOD R&D budget). Indicators of the effectiveness of present ONR technology 

 transfer efforts include the following: 



• Participation in CRDAs— Of the 413 CRD As involving DOD in 1993, 

 ONR participated in 80, approximately 19 percent (David Rossi, ONR, personal 

 communication, 1995), which compares favorably with ONR's portion of the 

 DOD budget (18 percent). Only seven of the 80 ONR CRDAs involved offshore 

 technology, however, (and most of these seven involve short-term consulting or 

 ONR facilities rental). The total number of CRDAs involving ONR has in- 

 creased to more than 280 as of July 1995 (T)avid Rossi, ONR, personal commu- 

 nication, 1995). Although this increase in the cumulative number of CRDAs in 

 which ONR is involved may suggest a significant improvement in technology 

 transfer in this area, specific information on the type of CRDAs represented (i.e., 

 by category such as ocean science, aerospace, etc.) was not available for the post- 

 1993 period. This lack of specific information makes comparison of ONR per- 

 formance before and after 1993 difficult, even for this single metric. 



• ORTA marketing tools — The main marketing mechanism used by ONR 

 is the CRDA (see above). Examination of brochures and advertisements distrib- 

 uted by ONR suggests that ONR's interest in ORTA is more as a vehicle to 

 market ONR laboratory facihties and personnel than to transfer ONR knowledge 

 and technology to the private sector for commercial development. 



• Proliferation of terms — Broad understanding of technology transfer 

 policy appears to have been hampered by conflicting rhetoric (e.g., conversion, 

 uni- and bi-directional transfer, dual-use, spin-on, spin-off, technology-push, 

 market-pull). Several responsible ONR officials are still uncertain about what 

 qualifies as "domestic technology transfer." 



• Low number of patents licensed — Less than 2 percent of patents 

 awarded to DOD are in ocean science and technology (80 of 4,600), despite the 

 fact that ONR (i.e.. Navy S&T) funding accounted for approximately 18 percent 

 of total DOD S&T funding in 1995. 



• Lack of effective marketing programs — ONR has designed a pilot pro- 

 gram at the University of Maryland to use MBA students and faculty to identify 

 technologies with promise for conmiercialization and to perform market research. 



