Profiles of Innovativeness and Effective Research Communication

ATTACHMENT A-4

Manager Interview Questions

Interview Schedule for Top Managers

As you know the Research Environment Survey, which is funded by DOE/BES, seeks to understand and improve the research environment for fostering innovation. This study is now also funded by the National Science Foundation in a joint project between the Center for Innovation at the University of Maryland and Gretchen Jordan at Sandia National Laboratories to build the science of science and innovation policy that Dr. Marburger has advocated. Your Laboratory is one of six national laboratories that have been selected to reflect a diversity of scientific disciplines.

In the development of the science of science and innovation policy, one of the key issues has been to examine whether diverse research teams that have cross-fertilization of ideas help stimulate more innovativeness, in particular scientific breakthroughs, a finding in the industrial innovation literature but one that may not apply to scientific research. We are testing this in surveys of the projects that have been selected with the advice of the middle managers in [name the specific departments and units in which projects are located]

But we are also interested in moving beyond the industrial innovation literature about the various policies that might encourage the creation of diverse research teams and exchanges of technical information. We would like to ask you about various Laboratory policies that have these objectives.

Are they are any policies that are designed to create diverse research teams?

If so, what are these?

Are there any special organizational units that exist to encourage the creation of teams that reflect different departments/centers within the Laboratory?

If yes, which ones are these?

[for each, obtain the date it was founded, the number of project teams within it]

Are there any special organizational units that exist to encourage the creation of project teams that connect the Laboratory to other research organizations, whether universities, industrial laboratories, other public laboratories, etc.?

If yes, which ones are these?

[for each, obtain the date it was founded, the number of project teams within it]

Are they any policies that are designed to encourage the exchange of technical information (outside of publications and attendance at conferences) between projects within the Laboratory?

If yes, what are these?

Are they any policies that are designed to encourage the exchange of technical information (outside of publications and conferences) between projects in the Laboratory with other research organizations, whether universities, industrial laboratories, or other public laboratories?

If yes, what are these?

Thank you for your time.