The participation of the federal government in the nation’s innovation ecosystem has been under scrutiny lately. For decades, federal funds have supported academic research, which in turn, has boosted private development, fueling new discoveries in medicine, technology, and other fields. The Trump administration is seeking to cap reimbursement for indirect research costs for biomedical science, which could mean billions of dollars in funding cuts from the National Institutes of Health.
The issue has turned a spotlight on the nation’s public-private research partnership, which has been credited with advances in a wide array of fields and emulated around the world. The Gazette spoke with Daniel P. Gross, an associate professor of business administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and former professor at Harvard Business School. Gross, together with Bhaven Sampat from Arizona State University, authored a recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper on the postwar expansion of biomedicine.
In this edited conversation, Gross said the partnership was a response to the urgent demands of World War II, helped the U.S. and its allies win the war, and seeded the current thriving system.
Full story: U.S. innovation ecosystem is envy of world. Here’s how it got started. — Harvard Gazette
