Description: This exhaustive survey analyzes a population of more than 16,000 U.S. research and development laboratories, and offers policymakers and scientists a blueprint for making more informed decisions about how to best utilize and develop the capabilities of these facilities. Some labs, such as Bell Labs, Westinghouse, and Eastman Kodak, have been global players since the turn of the century. Others, such as Los Alamos National Laboratory, have been mainstays of the military/energy industrial complex since they evolved in the 1940s. These and other institutions have come to serve as the infrastructure upon which a range of industries have relied and have had a tremendous impact on U.S. social and economic history.

Michael Crow and Barry Bozeman illustrate the histories, missions, structure, and behavior of individual laboratories, and explore the policy contexts in which they are embedded. In studying this large and varied collection of labs, Crow, Bozeman, and their colleagues developed a new framework for understanding the structure and behavior of laboratories that also provides a basis for rationalizing federal science and technology policy for more effective laboratories.

The book draws upon interviews and surveys collected from thousands of scientists, administrators, and policy makers, and features boxed "lab windows" throughout that provide detailed information on the variety of laboratories active in the U.S. national innovation system.

Limited by Design addresses a range of questions in order to enable policymakers, university administrators, and scientists to effectively plan for the future of research and development.

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