Introduction
We are all aware of the rapidly deteriorating position of the United States relative to the other high technology nations in terms of productivity, international prestige and economic security. (1)
There is no one cause to which this problem can be totally attributed, but there is little doubt that loss of the initiative in useful invention, in innovation — a somewhat different process — and breakdown of our ability to utilize quickly and cost—effectively such invention and innovation, are major factors in what is rapidly approaching disaster status. We have also failed to devise means for implementing the systems—inventions that provide frameworks on which individual, governmental or industrial innovation can be supported and integrated.
There is no obvious global or even national solution to these problems in sight, but one can develop microcosmic feasibility demonstration projects that epitomize the remedial measures and can then, by these demonstrations of success and failure, be guided into more general solutions that are technically feasible while still being marketable to the general population, and acceptable to the body politic.
Any successful design of this microcosmic sort will, of course, draw on the international body of success models, but will meld these features into a systems—design commensurate with the resources, the political climates, the academic facilities and the industrial strengths of its regions of influence;.
This study represents a basic design for an academically affiliated multidisciplinary center, directed toward stimulation of societally beneficial invention and innovation, but organized to facilitate prompt and economical conversion of such innovation into community rewarding realizations including adequate profit, individual benefits and marketing. The design should be flexible enough to invite and justify copying elsewhere.
The design offered here, as a viable realization of the proposed microcosmic—feasibility
demonstration, is framed specifically around the University of Minnesota, and
regionally includes the state of Minnesota, especially the Minneapolis-St. Paul
community, and involves the Twin Cities' high technology and the Minnesota government
and its agencies at municipal, regional and state level. It is, of course, translatable
to other microcosms including a medium size industrially oriented community
surrounded by industrial R & D and productive industry and having an accessible
responsive local and state government with the community organizations inherent
in such a complex.
In spite of the familiar pattern by which an operation of this magnitude normally develops and grows to maturity in about 15 years, it is recommended that, because of the economic urgency of the situation, this center be pushed by design into a 60 month maturity.
It is not contemplated that this center should suddenly emerge complete and full—blown, but it should contain initially all of the “genetic design” to carry it to full eventual fruition. There is no need, for example, that the center undertake all its essential functions in—house initially, as some can be obtained as consultation, some by legislative or industrial generosity. These features should, however, be planned at once to become functioning units of the system design as it matures.
This initial presentation does not offer a detailed organization—chart packaged with named offices and dated performance targets. Instead it examines the functions to be served, and special problems to be solved, preferably those both meritorious and yet salable at this time. A substantial history of pertinent design factors to be considered is included. In a later edition there will be a more detailed discussion of each, and related to these, a compilation of resources and pertinent documents and reports bearing on the design.
The Compendium is developed in three parts; first an introduction and outline of the proposed project, then a listing with brief summary of the several already—identified resource groups available to us for cooperation or support, and finally a compilation of pertinent reports and surveys or references to them. It is my hope that others will provide compatible statements of other projects and contributive support groups or agencies to be inserted in the report.
The brief statement sheets are intended to serve as agenda sources for individual problem discussions — each expected to recommend a solution or solutions.
The resource sheets represent brief identifications of individual and organizational
resources or data bases that can be consulted in more detail in the reports
and resource data body where each is identified.
Proposed Functions of Innovation Center
1) To provide technically competent screening service for evaluating proposed system, device, or service designs, professionally qualified supplementation of such designs, and approval.
2) To provide forums for synthesis of societally and community beneficial systems inventions and their innovation.
3) To provide marketing services for center—developed results, be they devices, systems, services or even figures of thought.
4) To provide utility patent, copyright, trademark service; patent worthiness evaluation, office actions, searches, licensing, regulatory negotiations, confidentiality decisions. Much of this is available inexpensively through industry.
5) To make jurisdictional assignment and provide referee service within the umbrella of center participants.
6) To support “birddogging” within government, industry and academic resources to initiate and carry out basic as well as applied research relevant to approved proj ects.
7) Provision of multiple—user or uniquely needed service facilities to do the modern equivalent of a central shops function, e.g. dedicated microcomputer cobble—up shop.
8) Legislative, industrial and community lobbying service, or more discretely stated, an information and news service.
9) A service location service to find for a particular client or problem; who knows, who can do, who has access to, needed information or facilities.
10) A service to develop policy and decision procedures in awarding “consultant benefits”, awards, patents, regulations within center financial and other resources.
11) To provide mechanisms for recruiting potentially participating organizations and individuals.
12) To provide a working group to develop problem t~onforming language and
figures of thought — mathematical, computer, or narrative — in which problems
become succinctly clear and tractable.
13) To provide legal and liability services for participating individuals and organizational units participating.
14) To establish a working study to develop community and citizen “quality of life” based optimizing procedures to established dimensioned and scaled estimators of acceptable risks and optimal choice of technologically accessible options.
15) To provide a standards and regulating drafting service to generate scientifically
sound yet industrially and politically attractive verbiage for proposed regulation
or legislation. This service would strive to avoid the present adversary status
forced upon regulatory Compendium of design and supporting documentation and
references relevant to the proposed
1. Introduction: Agenda for the Eighties -
2. Design Features of planned Center for InnovatIon and Technology Utilization
3. NAE Committees and Conferences on Industrial Innovation and Public Policy Options
4. National Science Foundation policy and RFPs in the Area of Innovation and Small Business Assistance
5. The A2 C2 - ARC Council and its Approach
6. Minnesota Inventors Congress
7. Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce Inventions & Technology Transfer Committee
8. Social Invention and Dan Ferber
9. The Brune Weinschel Proposal for a National Engineering Foundation
10. The Johns Hopkins Program on Personal Computers to Assist the Handicapped
11. University of Oregon Innovating Center
12. Kuopio University project
13. Dr. Sigfried Poppl and the Munich Biomedical Computer and Research Center
14. Dr. Mitsuhiro Yokota and the Japanese Success plan for Industrial, Academic, Government non-adversary cooperation
15. Carl Oja and Redwood Falls plan
17. White House Committee on Innovation, Funding, Jordan Baruch
18. Minnesota Science Museum
19. The NIH inter-institute program for non-invasive testing, especially in area of atherosclerotic disease of periphery, coronaries and carotids
20. Institute of Technology, University of Minnesota plan for Industrial Cooperation
21. Center for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota
22. Dr. Lester Goodman Notes and Comments on National R & D Policy
23. 3M
24. Northern States Power Company
25. Medtronic Corporation
21. The Control Data Corporation and its Center for Innovation, St. Paul
27. Medical Graphics Corporation
28. Family Participating Microcomputer-Aid Home Health Care
29. Personally Portable Whole life Medical History Passport
30. Computer Automated Electro surgery Project
31. Mutual Impedivity Spectrometry Analysis, Japanese IBM support?
32. Voluntary Cardiorespiratory Synchronization Project
33. Chronobiology Project
34. Mayo Clinic Advanced X-ray and Ultrasonic Diagnostic laboratory and Research Team
35. Minnesota Legislature Science & Technology Research Office
36. Pathfinder Venture Capital Fund
37. Robb Research
38. Stevenson—Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980
39. How to Comply with the Food and Drug Administration's New “Investigational Device Exemption (IDE)” Regulations, Including an Application Form
40. Harry Friedman Associates, Medical Engineering Consulting
41. Critique of CENTER FOR INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY UTILIZATION by Dave Schuelke,
Oct. 29, 1981.
History seems to bear out the hypothesis that — barring catastrophic interruptions — our modern society can bear the impact about once in a half—century of converting one major scientific—technical area from a highly skilled art or craft, with a large body of anecdotal wisdom, into an algorithmic area of hard science and technology that can be dealt with efficiently with numbers and with theoretical insight into underlying principles. These scientific surges can be clustered in various ways with different names, but finally we all acknowledge the “industrial revolution” and development of mass production in the middle of the last century; the great advances in chemical theory and its industrial applications leading to World War I. World War II forced us into rapid exploitation of physical science, especially that of nuclear processes, and the electronics, now reaching fruition, that has revolutionized communication, computation and control technology in the middle years of this century.
What should we prepare for, be concerned about, or build educational systems to cope with as we enter the second last decade of the nineteen hundreds and prepare to plunge into a new millennium of high hopes for mankind by 2000? We know by controlled experiment that new ideas ordinarily take about fifteen years to be assimilated into the general community acceptance. This period can be greatly extended, however, by societal taboos or community barriers and can be somewhat speeded up by what has been called technologically facilitated evolution.
It is the purpose of this essay to set up a tentative agenda, a menu if you like, of projects, researches, educational designs and physical plant that will facilitate the evolution of a societal way of life for the new millennium. This way of life will take biomimetic design in its stride, and will accept quantitative quality—of—life bioengineering as a normal part of industry and science. Rewriting of much of our regulatory and community as well as international law will be inevitable under such an optimizing, non—adversary rule.
Let us make a start by listing, not necessarily in order of importance, new, but culturally acceptable, components of the buildup toward the new, better biotechnology—aided life style. Each of these will require much marketing and reeducation as well as technological research and development.
Agenda for the Eighties and Groundwork for the new Millenium in the approaches available to the Biophysical Sciences
1. Systems Invention, Technology Utilization, and Invention to Order.
2. Invention and Technical Utilization Centers Conceptually Designed for their Missions.
3. Movement into Patient and Family Participation in Health Care via Dedicated Computer.
4. Rediscovery of the Town Meeting implemented by group reconfigurable transponsive TV, computer data lines.
5. VLSI & ELSI bioimplantables — externally reprogrammable? or is that too risky?
6. Approach to quantitated and individually paramaterized quality of life for the individual and the community — Santosha Index.
7. Biological Time as a computer manipulatable reality — Episodal Analysis, Ergodic Stationarity, Perceived Time Metrics and their hioassociates.
8. Buildup of social acceptability of scientific investigation into the mechanics of consciousness — like open sex understanding, it will require at least a decade to be acceptable.
9. Introduction of mutual optimization as against adversary policy, returning a little to Jeffersonian check—and—balance, but cooperating mutually, possibly allied against intentional adversary actions.
10. Reintroduction into higher education of the strategy of creating deliberately new language of easy understanding and quantitation. This leads implicitly into state 4 of education.
11. Rediscovery of the neglected human senses and their prosthetic representation and assistance.
12. Internal human Control Linguistics and Hierarchical Mental Programming
for faster and more accurate reasoning and action, especially with conflicting
information.