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| India-Pakistan |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory sets up at Thiruvananthapuram |
| 2007-11-10 |
| Cost pressures, shorter product life cycles and regulatory challenges are forcing leading multinationals to move their R&D base to developing nations, especially China and India. Frost and Sullivan estimates that the R&D outsourcing market in India will grow from $1.3 billion to about $9 billion by the year 2010. The latest entrant into this happening sector is a science and technology laboratory behemoth in the US - Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). It is setting up its India operations in collaboration with Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram. ORNL is a multi-programme science and technology laboratory managed for the US Department of Energy by University of Tennessee and Battelle. Scientists and engineers at ORNL conduct basic and applied research and development to create scientific knowledge and technological solutions that strengthen US leadership in key areas of science; increase the availability of clean, abundant energy; restore and protect the environment; and contribute to national security. ORNL also performs other work for the Department of Energy (DOE), including isotope production, information management, and technical program management, and provides research and technical assistance to other organisations. ORNL is the Department of Energy's largest science and energy laboratory. It was established in 1943 as a part of the secret Manhattan Project to pioneer a method for producing and separating plutonium. During the 1950s and 1960s and with the creation of DOE in the 1970s, it became an international centre for the study of nuclear energy and related research in the physical and life sciences. By the turn of the century, the laboratory supported the nation with a peacetime science and technology mission that was just as important as, but very different from, the days of the Manhattan Project. ORNL has staff of more than 4,200 and annually hosts approximately 3,000 guest researchers who spend two weeks or longer in Oak Ridge. Its funding exceeds $1 billion. The laboratory is in the final stages of a $350-million project to provide a modern campus for the next generation of `great science.' A combination of federal, state, and private funds is supporting the construction of 13 new facilities. Included in these new facilities are the Laboratory for Comparative and Functional Genomics, the Nanoscience Centre, the Advanced Microscopy Laboratory, the Office of Science's Leadership Computing Facility for unclassified high-performance computing, and the State-funded joint institutes for computational sciences, biological sciences, and neutron sciences. The ORNL and software companies in Technopark have formed a Technology Collaboration Council (TCC) based on an initiative taken by the travel-transportation-logistics player IBS Software. The TCC intends to progressively explore areas of potential collaboration. Both parties will identify areas of common interest for research and development and focus on opportunities to exchange personnel to work on technically challenging projects, and participate in lecturers and seminars. V. K. Mathews, Chairman and Managing Director, IBS Group, says research is an integral part of the plan that Technopark companies use to create solutions and provide services for their clients. There are potential areas of synergy between ORNL and Technopark. The purpose of the TCC is to empower Technopark companies to harness the potential that ORNL offers. According to Jeffrey Wadsworth, Director, ORNL, this alliance will significantly enhance research and development capabilities. "Besides, this will open new avenues in the way we conduct our research and manage projects by adopting the remote operations methodology practised at Technopark." eWorld spoke to Billy Stair, Director, Communications and External Relations, ORNL, on the lab's plans for India. Excerpts: What has drawn ORNL to India? Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, a partnership between the University of Tennessee and Battelle, America's largest not-for-profit research institution. UT-Battelle is attracted to India by a number of factors. Perhaps most important, India is a democracy that places a high value on individual freedoms, intellectual property and the free market system. As in America, this culture of freedom is reflected in the creativity of the Indian entrepreneur and makes it easier to establish lasting business relationships. During their visit to India, the UT-Battelle delegation met several individuals who had worked at ORNL in the past. A combination of these factors, added to a common language, makes a partnership between India and UT-Battelle a natural one. In retrospect, do you think the anti-outsourcing campaign was overdone? The growing integration of the world's economy will continue to bring about the movement of jobs, which in turn will create anxiety in areas where jobs are lost. This will not change, either in America or India. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing new technologies that will generate new products, new companies and new jobs. So long as this process continues, both nations can look forward to continued economic expansion. Outsourcing agencies are said to be worried about probable loss of control in processes and proprietary knowledge. How does ORNL propose to deal with this? Battelle has operated research laboratories and other business operations around the world for more than 50 years. The ability to manage both operations and proprietary knowledge is a challenge that Battelle has met successfully in a variety of nations in both Europe and Asia. Going forward, would you look at alliances with local companies, contractual outsourcing arrangements or even establishing local subsidiaries? UT-Battelle is evaluating a number of options and opportunities. It is impossible at this stage to predict a particular business model until more fundamental decisions have been reached about the nature of UT-Battelle's investment. Is transfer of technology in the realm of things at all, especially in the context of ORNL leadership in energy-related technology? Some technologies at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are "classified" by the US Government, meaning that they cannot be shared with other nations. The laboratory also has a broad range of research and technologies that is not classified. Perhaps more important, it is possible that teams of ORNL and Indian scientists can work together on problems of mutual interest. We have been quietly exploring some of these issues since our return from India. Do you think the prevailing regulatory environment in India favours the growth of R&D outsourcing? This is an area that we need to understand better than we do at present. Regulatory systems vary greatly from country to country. The regulatory system is a gap in our current understanding of India's economy. |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #1 National Laboratories were set up in support of national defense. Couldn't pay the good minds the salaries of civil servants and retain them. However, since the End of the Cold War[tm], you've seen your military slashed by about 50%, yet the laboratories are still [earmarked/porked] at pretty close to the old levels. While line divisions in the Army have deactivated, all the labs are still around. We've gone through the period of seeking alternate rationales to keep them funded [earmarked/porked], but that's becoming a wee bit thin. Now it appears they're getting into the outsourcing game just to stay in business. Really, it's way past time that the entire network of labs be rationalized [efficiently reorganized] and downsized to support the reason they were created in the first place. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-11-10 10:19 |