University-to-industry advanced technology transfer

121

University-to-industry transfer

advanced technology

A case study Richard

S. GOLDHOR

Center for Policy Alternatives,

Final version received

** and Massachusetts

December

Robert Institute

T. LUND of Technology,

1. Introduction In early 1976, Dr. James C. Bliss, President of Telesensory Systems, Inc., had completed arrangements to acquire from M.I.T. the necessary technology to develop a text-to-speech reading machine that would be an aid to the blind. By the end of October, 1980, a prototype reading machine was complete and by early 1981, five years after the start of the project, six machines were made available to the Veterans Administration. What happened during those five years, and what can we learn from this example of a success-

* Funding for this study was provided by the Division of Industrial Science and Technological Innovation of the National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C. ** Consultant to the M.I.T. Center for Policy Alternatives, and MIT doctoral candidate. + Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate, M.I.T. Center for Policy Alternatives.

12 (1983) 121-152

004%7333/83/$03.00

MA

02139,

U.S.A

1982

This case study examines the events in the transfer of an advanced technology (a text-to-speech reading machine) from the university group that developed the technology to an industrial firm seeking to exploit the innovation. After a brief history of the six-year project, the paper discusses the roles of the participants. markets, and time and cost considerations. A model of technology transfer is presented and policy implications derived from the case are discussed. Emphasis is placed on the need for matching technical competence between donor and recipient, and on the function of a transfer agent in facilitating the social process of technology transfer.

Research Policy North-Holland

+ Cambridge,

0 Elsevier Science Publishers

ful (or apparently successful) technology transfer? These are the underlying questions in this case study of the relationships and events connected with the transfer of a highly complex, sophisticated computer software program and associated hardware designs from a university research group to a small private manufacturing firm. The reading machine is a device that translates printed English text into spoken words or sentences. As the user scans a line of printed text with a camera-like device the machine reads the text and speaks to the user in phrases and sentences, all in real time. Such a machine could be an enormous boon to those who are sightless or for various other reasons cannot read, adding one more dimension of freedom to the visually handicapped. Three parties had an interest in the outcome of the endeavour: the donor of the technology, the Natural Language Processing Group of M.I.T.; the recipient of the technology, Telesensory Systems, Inc. of Palo Alto, California; and the funding agency, in this case the government as represented by the National Science Foundation. There was, indeed, a fourth partly - the community of blind people - which had a large stake in what transpired. It was for their benefit that the project was undertaken, but, as is frequently the case, these ultimate customers were represented only indirectly by the entrepreneurial firm that saw this group as a market for its innovative products. The problem of creating a generally useful reading machine was an enormous technical challenge. Simple machines that could speak a limited vocabulary of words were possible and were being introduced, but a machine that would both read and

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speak with a virtually unlimited vocabulary required a more fundamental approach to speech synthesis. This task had been undertaken by a research group at M.I.T. under Professor Jonathan Allen, and by 1975 a sophisticated, working system was demonstrated. At that point Telesensory Systems sought to acquire and exploit that technology. This case study examines the efforts to accomplish the transfer of the technology.

1.1. Cuse study approach Sponsorship of the case study came through a grant from the Division of Industrial Science and Technological Innovation of the National Science Foundation. The first objective of the study was to document the important stages in the transfer process, describe the roles played by the principals in the case, and observe features that either helped or hindered progress. The second objective was to analyze the detailed history for those key factors that need to be taken into account in sponsoring or managing cooperative research ventures. The third and last objective was to develop policy options for sponsors and participants in university-to-industry technology transfer. A specific motivation for the study was to enhance the quality of federally funded academic research projects that eventually result either in technology transfer to the private sector or in cooperative research ventures with the private sector. The approach used was to develop a detailed history of the project through the cooperation of all the participants, who provided time for interviews and supplied private documents, and who furnished critical review of the history that emerged. This process was helped greatly by the fact that one of the principals in the study (Goldhor) had also played a major role in the technology transfer project itself. Once the historical portion of the case study was completed, the data were examined for those aspects that were clearly important in this situation and that are likely to be critical to other university-to-industry transfers of technology. In this effort we were aided by the insights of other research into technology transfer and innovation, and by the experience of the other principal (Lund) in monitoring a five-year experiment in university-industry cooperative research into polymer processing technology sponsored by

technologv trunsfer

NSF’s Research Applied to National Needs (RANN) Program. Policy formulation followed from the analysis and from the experience of other students of transfer processes. Suggested policies were developed for each of the primary agents in the technology transfer, the donor group, the recipient group and the sponsor. This paper is organized into the three divisions of the research approach: case history, analysis and policy implications. A separate version of the case history has been prepared for possible use as a teaching case. This case will be published separately and will be used experimentally in one of the author’s courses at MIT. The teaching case ends where managerial decisions must be made, and the student is left to develop policies to deal with the situation at that time. I.2. Participunts

and background

The primary participants in our case study were the Natural Language Processing Group (NLPG) at M.I.T.; Telesensory Systems, Inc. (TSI) of Palo Alto, CA.; and the National Science Foundation. Secondary participants in the case were Dr. Dennis Klatt of M.I.T.‘s Speech Communications group, and the M.I.T. Patent Office. The time period covered by this study runs from mid-1975 to the end of 1980. None of the immediate participants had any active experience with technology transfer prior to the venture we will describe. The Natural Language Processing Group was a small computational linguistics research group within M.I.T.‘s Research Laboratory of Electronics. In mid-1975 it consisted of Professor Jonathan Allen, three staff members, and two graduate students. Since 1968 Allen’s group had been working on a text-to-speech system: a computer program that accepted English text in machine-readable form as input, and produced speech as output. The algorithms embodied in this system were the result of eight years of research and implementation. In 1975 the system was being rewritten as a series of modules (separate programs) that were executed sequentially to convert text to speech. The new system was called the Modular Speech System, or MSS. Each module read the data file produced by the previous module, transformed that data in some way, and produced a new data file as output. Thus the overall text-to-speech conversion took

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place as a series of smaller conversions. The nature of the transformations that took place were of central interest to the NLPG researchers, who regarded them as linguistically valid models of the way humans transform text to speech. They felt that the MSS programs were unique in several ways. First, they were linguistically sophisticated, “state of the art” algorithms for speech synthesis. Second, they covered the entire transformation of text to speech, rather than only a small step along the way, as with some other systems. Third, the algorithms were implemented in working programs that ran, could be tested and improved, and produced highly intelligible, natural sounding speech. The NLPG emphasis on practical results was due in part to the fact that the NLPG research was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Science Education Directorate. NSF had a very specific reason for sponsoring NLPG’s work: NSF was actively supporting the development of Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) systems, and saw the development of a low-cost, high-quality audio response system for CA1 as an important unmet need. NLPG felt that they could meet this need, as evidenced by the following quotation from their 1974 grant proposal to NSF: Our intent is to design a highly capable audio response facility which meets the needs of CA1 system implementers, and to especially design our audio response system so that it can be readily included in NSF/CA1 systems. In an appendix we include correspondence with NSF/CA1 contractors which indicates their desire and willingness to interact with us. Based on these responses, we feel that our work can be readily integrated into ongoing CA1 projects, and that not only can basic research in text-tospeech conversion be accomplished, but these improvements can be quickly utilized in CA1 systems, because the CA1 needs have been properly understood. [ 1, pp. 23, 241 By the summer of 1975, NLPG had a completely working “one word” system: a system running on a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-9 computer, written in assembler language, that could convert a series of single words to speech. The group was actively engaged in expanding this system to deal with entire sentences as sentences, and in rewriting the computer programs in a higher level language called BCPL [2] so that

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it would be easier to transfer to other systems, and easier for other researchers to understand. They were also working on the design of several special purpose processors. These processors were to handle those parts of the text-to-speech translation process that required large amounts of computation, and therefore ran quite slowly on standard computers. Despite NLPG’s commitment to an audio response facility for CA1 systems, no transfer of technology had yet taken place. Not all of the programs incorporated within the NLPG system had been developed by NLPG. In particular, the phonemic synthesis programs (see next section) had been developed by Dr. Dennis Klatt of the the M.I.T. Speech Communications group, neighbors to the NLPG, and working on closely related research. Dr. Klatt provided his programs to the NLPG for use in their text-tospeech system, and in 1975 was actively continuing his research on phonemic synthesis, and making improvements to his programs. Telesensory Systems, Inc. was a small company in Palo Alto, California, that was formed in 1970 to make high technology aids available to blind persons. TSI’s first and primary product was a device called the Optacon@. The Optacon was a hand-scanning, “direct-translation” reading machine for the blind: an instrument that consisted of a miniaturized camera that was scanned across a page of print, and an electronic unit that converted the black-and-white image picked up by the camera into a matrix of vibrating reeds that the (blind) user “read” with the pad of his or her finger. The machine did not interpret the image that it picked up in any way - it simply made a direct translation between patterns of “light” and “no light” and “vibrating” and “not vibrating”, regardless of whether it was centered over a letter, a picture, or a blank piece of paper. The president of TSI, Dr. James C. Bliss, received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T. in 1961. Bliss had been a group leader at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) from 1965 to 1971, and simultaneously a professor at Stanford University. While at SRI, Bliss had participated in the development of the Optacon technology. TSI was started in 1970 as a means of producing and marketing the Optacon. In mid1975 TSI had less than 100 employees, and $3 million in annual sales. Its Engineering Department employed half a dozen professional engineers.

During the summer of 1975 Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. (KCP), a company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced that it had developed a prototype of a totally automatic speech-output reading machine for the blind. The product was the brainchild of the company’s president, Ray Kurzweil, and was the company’s first and only product. The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) began actively raising funds to purchase these machines, and Kurzweil and NFB began applying political pressure for major governmental programs to disseminate the new reading machines. [3] Since TSI considered itself as a (or perhaps the) leading manufacturer of high-technology reading aids for blind persons, it regarded this announcement as a clear competitive challenge. Moreover, Kurzweil was promising to market a speech output reading machine in five years for less than $5,000, a direct threat to the Optacon, TX’s main product [3], which was being sold for about $6,000. As early as 1967, when the Optacon was under development at SRI, Bliss and others had considered the feasibility of an accessory unit that would plug into the Optacon and translate scanned text into speech. Between 1968 and 1970, Bliss and Dr. Robert Savoie (then a Research Engineer at SRI, who later came to TSI as Research Scientist) had conducted a reading machine feasibility study under sponsorship of the National Eye Institute. The study included the simulation of a reading machine and a human factors analysis of such systems [4]. In mid-1975 TSI had just finished the design and production of a talking calculator: a hand-held unit that spoke each digit or function as its key was pressed, performed the requested calculations, and simultaneously displayed and spoke the result. This project used a speech compression and digital storage technique that TSI licensed fro,n an outside inventor. The resulting product, called the SPEECH PLUSN talking calculator, was conceived, designed, developed, and released to production in one year. Although the speech encoding technology used for the calculator could not be directly employed in a reading machine, TSI felt that they had gained valuable experience in the area of synthetic speech. In addition, both the Optacon and the calculator development had required the design of custom Large Scale Integration (LSI) circuits by TSI - a technology that would probably be useful in the design of a reading machine.

In response to the perceived challenge from Kurzweil, TSI began to consider seriously the development of a speech-output reading machine in August 1975. As the result of some rough approximations, TSI felt that they could sell 500 to 1,000 reading machines at a price of $10,000 each [5]. The introduction of a reading machine product would only be financially feasible for TSI. however, if its development were supported by external funds. From the beginning, TSI felt that they should develop the required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system internally, but should look elsewhere for the Text-to-Speech (ITS) technology. They were aware of a handful of speech synthesis research projects around the world among them, the NLPG group at M.I.T. and had met Professor Allen in 1970 when Allen authored a review paper on sensory aids for the blind. The National Science Foundation was the third participant in the transfer efforts between TSI and NLPG. NSF was established in 1950 “to promote and advance scientific progress.. . by sponsoring scientific research, encouraging and supporting improvements in science education, and fostering scientific information exchange” [6, p. iii]. This basic purpose was extended by Presidential Directive in 1972 to include “making grants or contracts for applied scientific research relevant to national problems involving the public interest. [and by supporting] such work at other than academic and nonprofit institutions.. . ” [6. p. iii]. NSF’s Directorate of Science Education had provided much of the funding for the M.I.T. research, and Allen was planning to request a renewal of that funding in 1976 for two more years. In another Directorate the Foundation’s Research Applied to National Needs (RANN) program was seeking to [focus] U.S. scientific and technological resources on selected problems of national importance for the purpose of contributing to their timely, practical solution. [RANN also was to serve] as a bridge between basic research programs and the developmental, demonstration, and operational programs of.. . industry. [In addition] RANN also [placed] considerable emphasis on the evaluation, dissemination, and utilization of the results of the research supported. [Finally,] Joint proposals from combiof universities,. . [and] small nations

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business. . [were] encouraged, as appropriate, to bring together broader capabilities and interdisciplinary and management skills to provide a comprehensive approach to complex problems. ]6, p. 411 A less direct participant in the transfer effort was the M.I.T. Patent Office, whose basic objectives had been expressed as follows: [The Patent Office seeks]. . . to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by utilizing the benefits of the established patent system.. . Patents provide a means toward the development and utilization of discoveries and inventions. Institute patent policy has been established to ensure that those inventions in which it has an equity will be utilized in a manner consistent with the public interest. The Institute is also aware of the value of patents in directing attention to effective individual accomplishment in science and engineering. [7] In 1975 the Patent Office was actively engaged in granting patent licenses, but had almost no experience in licensing the use of software developed by M.I.T. Legally speaking, software is not patentable, but rather is protected under the copyright laws of the nation. The only software for which the Patent Office had granted licenses were “canned” stress analysis packages developed for airplane design. These were relatively simple programs, and were licensed on a non-exclusive basis for a nominal fee to anyone wishing to use the programs [8]. The Patent Office had an official policy on licensing patents and copyrights [9], but this information was not actively distributed to M.I.T. researchers. Instead, the Patent Office saw itself as existing to provide information and assistance to researchers upon request, and generally attempting to protect the rights of faculty, staff, and students

PI.

2. Technical

description

of a reading machine

The term “reading machine” can be interpreted to include a wide variety of reading aids for blind and near-blind persons. A reading machine of the sort that TSI was trying to develop can read and speak English-language text. It is designed to work

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with printed material of at least average newspaper quality. As eventually implemented by TSI, it consists of a series of processing elements, each of which accepts information from the previous element, converts or processes that information in some way, and passes it on to the next element. Figure 1 shows the approximate configuration of processors in TSI’s reading machine. The first element in the system is the camera. The camera is focused on a single-letter-sized area of a page, and is scanned along a line of text (either manually by the user or automatically by an electronic scanner). The camera “sees” the letter-sized-area as a mosaic of tiny squares, each of which is either white or black. An example of the way it sees a letter is shown in Fig. 2. The camera generates a new mosaic “picture” several hundred times each second. This rapidly changing “motion picture” is passed to a Snapshot Generator. This processing element monitors the rapidly changing mosaic until it sees a letter-like shape. It passes a snapshot of that shape on to the next stage. Approximately 20 such snapshots will be generated each second as a text line is scanned. The snapshots are passed to the Character Recognizer, which examines each snapshot and tries to identify the pattern of white and black squares as a particular letter. If it can recognize the character in the snapshot, it passes on a code for that character to the next processing element. The elements discussed so far constitute the reading, or Optical Character Recognition (OCR) subsystem of the reading machine. The remaining processing elements consitute the Text-to-Speech (ITS) subsystem. The text-to-speech subsystem is shown on the right side of fig. 1, and in more detail in fig. 3. The first step in text-to-speech conversion is to group the raw character codes generated by the OCR subsystem into English words. This is done by the Formatter. This processing element converts irregular forms (such as “$1.23,” “Mr.,” and “3:45”) into words (such as “one dollar and twenty three cents,” “mister,” and “three forty five”). These words, along with accompanying marks, are passed to the Phoneme Generator. Phonemes are simple speech sounds; thus the Phoneme Generator converts codes for the spellings of words into codes for the sounds of words. As shown in fig. 3, there are two basic ways to convert words to speech. One is to retrieve the

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“READING”

Fig. I. TSI reading

SUBSYSTEM

“SPEAKING”

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sound pattern for the word from a database of prestored patterns. The other way is to synthesize the phoneme sequence from the spelling of the word by applying a set of letter-to-sound rules. The simplest form of retrieval is from a dictionary that contains the spelling and phonemes of common words. A more complex retrieval technique involves the decomposition of complex words into constituent morphemes. A morpheme is a letter or group of letters that is found in many words, and has a consistent pronunciation and meaning. Some examples are -s, un-, -ceive, and

Fig. 2. Letter W as seen by the OCR Camera

-tion. Thus the word “belatedly” can be decomposed into the morphemes be, late, ed, and ly. The phonemic sequences for these morphemes can be retrieved from a dictionary, and recombined to generate the sound pattern for the entire word. Correct morph decomposition is considerably more complex than simple dictionary lookup, but requires substantially less storage than an equivalent dictionary of complete words. In addition to specifying the pronunciation of a word, syntactic information about a word can be provided either by a dictionary or by the morph decomposition process. In particular, the syntactic part of speech of the word - noun, verb, adjective, article, proposition, etc, - can be determined, or at least narrowed down to a few possibilities. This information is useful in determining the syntactic structure of the sentence, which in turn helps to determine intonation, rate of speech, and so forth. A Parser uses grammatical rules to derive syntactic structure information from the lexical part of speech data. (In the TSI system, the Parser was eliminated, for reasons that will be discussed later.) If a word cannot be found in a dictionary or decomposed into morphemes, its phonemic representation must be derived by applying a set of letter-to-sound rules. In English, several hundred

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R.S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / lJnioersrt_y to - industry technology transfer [CHARACTERS] TEXT FORMATTING

I

TEXT-TOPHONEME CONVERSION

: [PHONEMES] RATE, INTONATION.

ETC.

PHONEME-TOPARAMETER CONVERSION

GENERATION OF ABSTRACT VTM PARAMETER

1 [PARAMETERS] *

7, I

4

I

[SPEECH]

I

1

AU010 OUTPUT

Fig. 3. Details of text-to-speech

VOCALTRACT MOOELING

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rules must be supplied in order to achieve an adequate level of performance. Synthesizing a phonemic pattern for a word using letter-to-sound rules usually requires much more processing than either dictionary lookup or decomposition, and is more likely to produce an incorrect phonemic representation. Once phonemes have been generated they are passed to the Parameter Generator. This processing element calculates detailed values for speech rate, phrasing of sentences, intonation, stress, and so forth. It uses this information to generate sets of rapidly changing control parameters for a model of the human vocal tract. The Vocal Tract Model (VTM) simulates the acoustic qualities of the human lungs, vocal cords, throat, mouth, tongue, lips, and nose. The output of the VTM is a digital representation of a speech waveform.

The Parameter Generator and VTM together are often referred to as a phonemic synthesis system. The final stage of the reading machine is the Audio Stage. Here the digital waveform pattern is converted into an electrical signal that is filtered and amplified ant then used to drive the loudspeaker that produces the speech sounds.

3. Chronology

of the transfer

process

The transfer of the M.I.T. text-to-speech technology to TSI occurred between mid-1975 and the end of 1980. In retrospect the process proceeded in five stages, each lasting approximately one year. The initial stage, from August 1975 to June 1976, was exploratory in nature. Bliss knew of the M.I.T. research from his personal acquaintance

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with Allen, and from talks Allen had given at Stanford. In these talks Allen cited reading machines for the blind as a possible application of the M.I.T. text-to-speech technology. In the late summer of 1975 Bliss spoke with Allen about TSI’s interest in a reading machine. Allen responded with enthusiasm, and agreed to visit TSI in November to discuss practical possibilities in some detail. In early September TSI committed itself to examining the technical and funding prospects for a reading machine project. Although TSI was aware of other synthetic speech work, the work of Allen’s group at M.I.T. was regarded as being the most advanced, and with the best longterm potential. There was, however, some initial feeling that the NLPG system was rather complex, and that it might be better to begin with a simpler system. In early November 1975, Allen visited TSI and participated in wide-ranging discussion about a reading machine. Allen described the M.I.T. algorithms and the special-purpose hardware NLPG was building. Professor John Linvill of Stanford University (a member of TSI’s Board of Directors) indicated that NSF’s RANN program might be a good source of funding if a reading machine could need”. He agreed to be presented as a “national look into the possibility of such support. Allen wondered about the implications of commercialization of M.I.T. research results, and Bliss stated that “TSI’s approach was to go through the front door and handle everything in a straightforward, open manner” [IO]. The licenses that TSI had with Stanford for the Optacon were mentioned as examples of what TSI hoped could be arranged with M.I.T. Allen agreed to explore licensing arrangements with the M.I.T. Patent Office, and to estimate the cost to NLPG of exporting the speech technology. Allen remembers emphasizing to Bliss at this point the necessity of hiring someone with speech expertise [ 1 I] to work at TSI. Much of TSI’s effort in early 1976 focused on getting funding for the reading machine project. In February 1976, they were visited by James Allen and Robert Lauer of the National Science Foundation. Bliss described TSI’s interest in getting RANN support to develop an experimental version of a reading machine that would run on a large minicomputer. Allen and Lauer gave Bliss considerable guidance in what a formal proposal to RANN should look like, and Lauer told Bliss

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that he would assign one of his staff members, Herman Harvey, to examine the proposal. Lauer indicated that if all went well funding might be available by June 1976 [ 121. Herman Harvey remembers the project as his (and RANN’s) first technology transfer case [13]. He saw it at the time as a “high risk” project with a potential for “a lot of bang for the buck” ~ just the sort of project RANN was looking for. He was aware of Kurzweil’s system, and thought that it would be valuable to the nation to have two competing projects. Harvey saw himself as belonging in a fairly passive role in the TSI/M.I.T. relationship. He thought that TSI and MIT. provided each other with “an identity”: TSI provided evidence that M.I.T.‘s work was more than “just an academic exercise,” and M.I.T. provided TSI with considerable credibility. Harvey did not believe RANN should become actively involved in the transfer process. He did insist that TSI get a written letter of intent to cooperate from Allen. Allen provided Bliss with such a latter in March 1976. Dennis Klatt also agreed to the use of his programs by TSI. In the middle of that month TSI submitted a formal proposal for an “Experimental Simulation of an Optical Character Recognition/ Speech Output Reading Machine for the Blind” [ 141. At approximately the same time, TSI ordered a DEC PDP-1 l/34 minicomputer (their first computer other than simple microprocessors). By June 1976 the project was beginning to pick up steam. The PDP-11 was up and running. Jim Caldwell, an engineer from Bell Laboratories with experience in speech signal processing, had been hired and was to begin work on July 1. Herman Harvey called to inform Bliss that the RANN grant had been awarded. Dr. Steve Brugler, TSI’s Engineering Vice President, Rob Savoie, and Jim Caldwell visited M.I.T. There they heard a demonstration of the old “one word” system, met the NLPG staff members, listened to detailed lectures on the internal workings of the new MSS system, and saw the special-purpose hardware under construction. They were told that the MSS software would be complete by the end of the summer, and that the hardware would be available by October. This meeting was the first between the staff members of the two organizations. Both sides enjoyed the visit, and parted with a good deal of enthusiasm and optimism over the prospects for a successful project.

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Brugler, however, had some concerns. He expressed these in a detailed letter to Allen the week after the visit to M.I.T. [15]. In this letter he emphasized that TSI wanted to proceed quickly with the development of a reading machine: “Our goals with respect to the upcoming reading aid project are to successfully complete our NSF project in 1977, to build and disseminate a number of evaluation reading machines in 1978, and to commence full production of a new generation reading machine for the blind.. . in the first quarter of 1979.” Brugler expressed concern about the timetable that had been set up for transferring the MSS, wondering whether it was realistic. He also inquired about the establishment of formal channels of communication between the two groups, for and the need for “any limits or protocols consulting with [the NLPG] people.” Brugler was also greatly concerned about the licensing problem. In his letter to Allen he pressed for an agreement giving TSI exclusive rights to the M.I.T. speech technology, at least for applications for the handicapped, and preferably for all applications. Brugler listed seven detailed questions about possible licensing arrangements, and ended his letter with the statement, “Of the above points, the timely consummation of a formal MIT-TSI agreement is most important.” No written reply to this letter was ever received. Unknown to TSI, it was in fact the standard policy of the M.I.T. Patent Office to grant only non-exclusive licenses, “unless it can otherwise be reasonably determined that the public interest will best be served by.. _an exclusive license” 171. In addition, research such as NLPG’s that had been sponsored by federal agencies and foundations was subject under the terms of the sponsorship to certain restrictions on commercialization. The exact terms of these restrictions varied from agency to agency, and also changed with time within an agency. Thus it was necessary for the Patent Office to reconstruct the funding history of a research project in order to determine what restrictions applied in its particular case. This reconstruction was a very tedious and time-consuming task, and was viewed with particularly little enthusiasm in those instances (such as this one) where the Patent Office regarded the possibility of receiving significant royalties from the license as being slight [S]. In the second stage of theproject,from July 19’76 to July 1977, the physical transfer of the technol-

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ogy took place. Tony Sword, a TSI engineer, was assigned to work with the MIT programs as they became available. The detailed transfer schedule that TSI and MIT had agreed on in the spring of 1976 called for all of the MSS software, written in BCPL, to be transferred to TSI, compiled, tested, and operating properly by mid-September 1976 that is, within three months. By the end of October of that year, TSI had received only about half of the MSS software, and had not managed to get any of it running. The special-purpose hardware was still under construction at M.I.T. Even the BCPL compiler, which TSI had received from M.I.T. and attempted to use on their PDP-11, was not completely functionable. (Since all the MSS modules were written in BCPL, this was a serious bottleneck.) Part of the problem was that NLPG had not completed the implementation of some of the MSS modules, particularly the recoding of Klatt’s phonemic synthesis routines. Another problem was that M.I.T. and TSI did not have an easy way to transfer software, since the two groups did not have any computer storage medium (tapes, disks, etc.) in common. To transfer a program from NLPG to TSI, NLPG would run a special program that translated the program file from PDP-9 format to PDP-11 format and write the file onto a tape. This tape was mailed t-o TSI. TSI would take the tape and one of their disk packs to Stanford Research Institute, where they would borrow some time on a computer that could write the contents of the tape onto the disk pack. The disk pack would then be brought back to TSI, and converted into the proper format for TSI’s computer system. In November 1976, Allen and two NLPG graduate students, Doug O’Shaughnessy and Richard Goldhor, visited TSI. Goldhor helped Sword debug the BCPL compiler, and begin work on the MSS programs. At this meeting O’Shaughnessy and Goldhor learned for the first time that TSI’s schedule with NSF committed them to having a real-time system running in February 1977. They were surprised to hear this, because they did not believe that it would be possible to execute the MSS in real time on a PDP-I I even if M.I.T.‘s special purpose software were running and available. Throughout the next several months, O’Shaughnessy, Goldhor, and Sharon Hunnicutt, anotrlter NLPG staff member, continued to work

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on the MSS system at MIT, and to work with Sword, who was strggling to duplicate their work at TSI. A primary goal of NLPG in constructing the MSS was to be able to continue their research on text analysis and speech synthesis. The system proved to be an excellent vehicle for such research, and significant improvements continued to be made. This was a mixed blessing from TSI’s point of view, because it meant that Sword periodically received updated routines that he then had to incorporate into his version. In addition, the specifications of the BCPL language, and the compiler that implemented it, were changed by the compiler’s author, a staff member in the Speech Communications group at M.I.T. This was done to accommodate the transfer of NLPG’s programs to a new larger computer at M.I.T. The result was that programs written in the spring of 1977 could not be compiled on the old compiler from the previous fall, and all programs written in the fall of 1976 had to be hand edited before they could be compiled on the new spring compiler. The three M.I.T. workers visited TSI again in February 1977 for more on-site consulting, All of the work that the NLPG staff did during this stage of the transfer was at M.I.T. expense except for direct travel costs. In the middle of March 1977, a major crisis occurred. Bliss was to be a panelist at a workshop on sensory aids sponsored by the Smith-Kettlewell Institute of Visual Sciences in San Francisco. Also on the panel was Ray Kurzweil, who was to report that his reading machine was in active production. Bliss wanted very much to be able to play a tape of high-quality synthetic speech produced in TSI’s laboratories. A week before the workshop, it become obvious that TSI could not produce such a tape - their version of the MSS was still not working. Late on a Sunday evening O’Shaughnessy flew out to Palo Alto to try to get the programs working. After two days of intense effort it became clear that major problems still remained before speech could be produced. O’Shaughnessy returned to Cambridge, and Bliss went to the workshop without a tape to play. Following Bliss’s return, TSI’s management seriously discussed abandoning the M.I.T. transfer effort as being too complex and uncertain of success. The introduction to a memo written by Jim Caldwell in early April sums up the situation this way:

technology trmsfer

TSI has entered a period of critical decisions regarding the direction of development of a reading machine product. Particularly in the area of text-to-speech the past approach has been one of speculation and gamble; we have hoped that the necessary technology would fall nearly into place with minimal effort on our part and that we would escape the pressures of competition long enough to pull together a practical system. Much of the basis for this gamble has been reliance on advice from outside TSI and a shortage of speech expertise within TSI. Had things gone according to plan, a non-real-time text-to-speech facility would have been available at TSI in late 1976, and significant contributions to developing the TSI expertise required to reduce text-to-speech to practice could have been accumulating through study of and experimentation with the M.I.T. system. Unfortunately, it appears that we have been largely losing the gamble on all fronts, and much valuable time has been lost. To make the pill more bitter, we don’t even know whether our goal of a low-cost, personally-owned reading machine is consistent with the cost of manufacturing a system which can produce M.I.T.-quality speech, or even what the “M.I.T. quality” is! [ 161 In the end, however, TSI decided to continue with M.I.T. Bliss’s assessment in 1980 was that the decision to continue was based on three factors: (1) the M.I.T. system produced speech that was clearly superior to any other available system, and TSI was dedicated to the development of the highest-quality reading machine possible; (2) TSI had widely publicized the fact that they were using the M.I.T. system and felt that their company’s reputation would be significantly damaged if they were forced to abandon the cooperative effort with M.I.T.; (3) TSI continued seriously to underestimate the amount of effort required to complete the project [ 171. Caldwell’s April memo represents his personal awakening to the gravity of the situation, and his resolution to try to do something about it. I started acting as the text-to-speech Project Leader. That’s pretty much what I’d been hired for: to be TSI’s ‘Speech Expert,’ to implement [the text-to-speech part of] a reading machine. I hadn’t been doing that, and Tony Sword didn’t

R. S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / Unioersily

want to do it. This was my first attempt the job.

to do

I hadn’t been doing the job because we very naively thought that Allen would give us everything. He was supposed to give us the software, the parameter generator hardware, the PARCOF [parameter to Vocal Tract Model coefficient] hardware, the Vocal Tract Model hardware, everything. Since Tony had [PDP] 11 experience, it had sort of made sense for him to work with the MIT stuff, while I concentrated on other projects. [ 181 Caldwell was appointed text-to-speech Project Leader, and two additional engineers were hired to work with him: Bill Ross, a digital designer; and Syd Steele, a programmer. In May 1977 TSI hired Dennis Klatt as a consultant, in an effort finally to get the phonemic synthesis programs working, and also to get more detailed information about their operation. Dennis was to work one day a week (at M.I.T.) for TSI. His assignments were essentially programming assignments intended to make his programs more useful in a reading machine environment. For example, the M.I.T. version of the text-to-speech system did not include any way to vary the speech rate, that is, the average number of words of speech produced per minute. For a commercial reading machine environment, direct control over the speech rate was quite important. A more significant practical drawback to the M.I.T. system was that it was not designed to speak while a sentence was being scanned, but rather required a full sentence in order of processing to produce any output. Each module of the system operated in an “input-process-output” manner: it waited until it had an entire word, or even sentence, of input before it internally processed the input, and did not produce any output until all processing was finished. This was a serious problem for a reading machine, which requires a “pipeline” architecture providing for continuous text input and speech output. In commenting on the results of Klatt’s consulting, Jim Caldwell explained: The real We did we could did not

problem was that the timing was bad. not have a working system into which plug Dennis’s suggestions, and we also have the kind of staff which could

-io -industrytechnology transfer interact well with an acoustic phonetician Klatt. There was a serious professional match here. [ 191

131

like mis-

TSI did not renew Klatt’s consulting contract when it expired at the end of 1977. When the NLPG staff members were visiting TSI in February 1977, Brugler had casually suggested a more extended stay during the summer. In March, Goldhor telephoned Brugler to ask about TSI’s interest in hiring him as a summer employee. Brugler thought the idea was a good one, and Allen had no objections, so in late May Goldhor came out to Palo Alto with his family for the summer. Goldhor’s interests combined linguistic and software engineering. His M.I.T. Master’s thesis had been a study of syntactic effects on word duration, and he had helped design the basic architecture of the Modular Speech System, and he was familiar with most of the modules. His previous experience with large applications programs included work on several computer aided instruction systems. Goldhor brought out the latest version of the MSS with him and tried again to generate a working system. By the end of the summer he had succeeded, and TSI for the first time had a working text-to-speech system, although it required six minutes of processing to produce one second of speech. Goldhor also gave weekly seminars to TSI engineers, explaining the basic principle of speech synthesis and how the M.I.T. algorithms implemented those principles. By the time he returned to M.I.T., Goldhor had become close friends with the TSI workers, and had a personal interest in the success of the project. While the text-to-speech transfer effort was proceeding, TSI was working actively on the rest of the reading machine project. The optical character recognition work had begun under Rob Savoie, who was the reading machine project leader. Jim Caldwell was engaged in the design of a custom set of large scale integrated circuit chips that would implement the vocal tract model. This chip set was necessary because the very large computational requirements of this part of the text-to-speech system could not be met in real time by any existing small, inexpensive general purpose processor. The necessity of designing a custom LSI chip

132

R.S. Goldhor

and R. T. Lund

/

iJnrwrvt,v

set was a direct result of choosing a digital approach to implementing a vocal tract model. Brugler had spent some time examining an analog approach, with a fair degree of technical success. TSI choose the digital approach for several reasons, not all of them relevant to the reading machine project. Among the reasons were the potential for manufacturing simplicity and ease of maintenance that an LSI chip set offered; TSI’s success with earlier custom LSI efforts; and M.I.T.‘s orientation toward an all-digital model [ 191. Throughout this period TSI continued to be concerned about the licensing issue. Although we have been unable to locate any documents from the period between July 1976 and February 1979 that discuss this issue, it appears that TSI continued to press for an exclusive license, and that the M.I.T. Patent Office continued to express a preference for a non-exclusive license. Apparently the Patent Office became involved in the transfer some time in 1976 or early 1977. The attorney who was working on the case left M.I.T. in mid-1977, and a new attorney, Diane Thilly, assumed responsibility for negotiating with TSI when she joined the M.I.T. Patent Office in September 1977. According to Thilly [S], M.I.T. had no experience in this kind of software technology transfer. Furthermore, a new federal copyright law was to take effect in 1978. Thilly spent the last quarter of 1977 studying the new law and setting up a standard copyright licensing form for M.I.T. During 1977 TSI was also negotiating with Dennis Klatt for a separate license to use his phonemic synthesis programs. Klatt was willing to give TSI an exclusive license for use of his programs in sensory aids, but wanted to negotiate a non-exclusive license for their use in other areas. Klatt and TSI signed a “Basis for License Agreement” in the summer of 1977. During the third stage, from August 1977 to May 1978, the M.I.T. software was extensively evaluated by TSI. Before Goldhor left at the end of the summer, he had measured the memory and processing requirements of the MSS modules on the PDP-I 1. These measurements were used in conjunction with measurements of one module Steele had converted to assembler language and redesigned to run quickly, to develop the first predictions of the memory and processing requirements of a real time system. The conclusion was that a machine with approximately the capacity

to -industry

technologv

transfer

and power of the PDP-11, plus the custom LSI VTM chips, would be required to run the TSI programs in real time. At the time, no microprocessor with this capacity and power was available. In the spring of 1977, NLPG had given TSI some special-purpose hardware for VTM parameter generation (see the technical description of the reading machine) for checkout and duplication. It had been built at M.I.T. by one graduate student, and microprogrammed by another. It had never been tested at full speed. After six months of frustrating work, Ross concluded that the basic design of the machine was sufficiently flawed that it would be difficult ever to make it work. In any case, TSI had concluded by that time that the function for which the hardware had been designed could be performed adequately by a generalpurpose processor, so the hardware was returned to M.I.T. In the fall of 1977, TSI decided to use a greatly simplified version of the M.I.T. phoneme-generation modules. They specifically decided to leave out a unique morph decomposition algorithm which NLPG considered to be linguistically insightful and vital to the generation of high quality speech. Unfortunately the algorithm was also quite complex, and involved a large specially-formatted data base. In its place Steele wrote a simple “exceptions dictionary” algorithm, and incorporated some letter-to-sound rules that the M.I.T. system used as a backup to the morph decomposition algorithm. In parallel with this, TSI also developed a completely separate, very simple text-to-speech system. To do this they purchased the commercially available VOTRAXs synthesizer. The VOTRAX was fed phonemes produced by a simple letter-to-sound program published by Dr. Douglas McIlroy of Bell Laboratories. The system was put together in two months, it ran in real time using a small microprocessor, and the speech produced was of adequate quality for testing purposes (although significantly inferior to the M.I.T. speech). This was the first real time text-to-speech system that TSI produced. In fact. it was very similiar to the text-to-speech system being used by Kurzweil Computer Products in their reading machine. This period saw a significant shift in the relationship between M.I.T. and TSI. The M.I.T. research group felt strongly that their role had ended

R.S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / Unioersit~v - to industrv technology tram@

when TSI had a system that was equivalent to their own. They did not feel obligated, or even motivated, to give TSI engineering advice that would help then convert the M.I.T. research software into production software. Profesor Allen commented later that his job as an academician was to perform fundamental research, not to produce a completed system that would be directly applicable to a specific purpose. He felt that his responsibility was to present a system that worked very well, but that the tailoring of the system for practical use must be done by others [20]. In response to this shift, TSI committed themselves for the first time to mastering the knowledge implicit in the M.I.T. software. By the end of May 1978, TSI still had made little progress toward developing production software. What software adaptation had been done was more useful as a means of estimating processing and memory requirements than in bringing TSI substantially closer to having working software. Indeed, very little visible progress was made during the fall of 1977 and the spring of 1978. During this period Tony Sword, Syd Steele, and Bill Ross all left TSI. Sword had been removed from the text-to-speech project in late spring of 1977 because of what was perceived as inadequate progress in mastering the MIT. software. He disagreed strongly with this perception, and moved on to his new assignments with some resentment [21]. After continuing problems, he was fired in early 1978. Bill Ross resigned in frustration over having to work on the M.I.T. parameter generation hardware, and because he was not allowed to pursue his own ideas for developing a custom parameter generator. By mutual agreement, Syd Steele was moved out of the text-to-speech project because of a lack of interest in, and progress in mastering, the linguistic concepts underlying the M.I.T. programs 1221. He resigned from TSI in May 1978. During the fall of 1977 Rob Savoie, who was the reading machine project leader, had been involved in the development of the OCR software. He was also the R&D manager for all of TSI’s development projects, and in February 1978 had been temporarily reassigned to devote his full attention to another production development project that was in a state of crisis. In late spring, of 1978, therefore, only two engineers were working on the reading machine project: Jim Caldwell and Pat

133

Clark, who was working on the OCR software. In mid-April 1978 the TSI engineering and maketing group had an opportunity to examine and try out a Kurzweil Reading Machine. As Rob Savoie recalled later, “It worked very well -- better than any we’d seen before, or have seen since. It really scared us!” [22]. At the end of April Geoff Nelson, TSI’s marketing Vice President, wrote a memo to TSI’s Executive Committee, in which he expressed serious concern about the reading machine project, in light of the competitive pressure from Kurzweil Computer Products. He predicted that Kurzweil would have increased production, improved versions, and lower prices for their reading machines. In particular, Nelson warned that by 1980, Kurzweil might be producing a high-quality reading machine at prices competitive with TSI’s planned $10,000 range, and therefore not much more expensive than TSI’s Optacon, which sold for around $6,000. Nelson concluded: If, by early 1980 at the latest, we are not in the market with our [reading machine] system ~ and with one that is more than an experimental prototype - we will be at a significant disadvantage, probably to the point that we will not be able to sustain Optacon and related sales at anywhere near our present volume. The implications to TSI’s viability are clear. I view this as the most significant threat to TSI in the company’s history. [23] Nelson recommended that the reading machine project be given top priority, and that the staffing be greatly increased. As a result of this memo, the Executive Committee approved a much higher level of effort on the reading machine project. Rob Savoie was moved back to lead the project, and TSI decided to hire almost a dozen new engineers. Figure 4 shows the organization of the reading machine project at this time. Figure 5 and table 1 show the professional levels of the project throughout its history. A crucial element to TSI’s ability to respond in this manner was the continuing level of outside support the company was receiving. It had completed the work on its first NSF grant at the end of 1977, and had applied for another grant to fund further development. This grant came through in early April 1978. Table 2 provides an indication of the rate of growth of sales and of R&D expendi-

134

-to-industry technology transfer

R.S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / Umoersi~v

READING MACHINE PROJECT

I AUTO-SCANNER SUB.PAOJECT r-J

/

I

SUB-PROJECT

Fig. 4. Sub-projects

\

CONTROLLER SUB-PROJECT

OCR

and tasks of the reading

TTS SUB-PROJECT

machine

development

project

for the five-year period from 1976 through 1980. By 1980 R&D expenditures were approximately 22 percent of total company sales. Much of I

1975

I

I

I

1976

I

I

1977

I

I

1978

I

KWAGERNT product line ~__________________.________

Q”o,e

TTS sub-proj.

& ._____

,

1979

I

[iii=i==ii

RM project

1978

this growth was due to R&D support from external sources. Table 3 shows that a substantial fraction of the total reading machine project was

tures

PR[UECTSIACTIVITIES iii=ii==l=i=i=iiis=

- Summer.

Groner

,980 I

============

,

#

____________.________________-____.~~__.~____* Ca,,jwe,,

L--Toal--

______#

&---- Savoie ----• [_;I

SYSTEM packaging.

[;;;;;_;;;_=='

mechanical

CONTRCCLER:

[

[ =i_i===lii=i

II

CAKRA,

= = == =

I == is

l

iii===iiiiii=F_iiii===

#

= ]

P.ANNER [ ii===i

b;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;__;__1 [

ie

i=iiiiiliii=iiiiiiil

[ ii_iiii

t

z

l

i=lii=i

__;=;;_,

&;;] WTlCAL

CHARACTER

RECCENITION ~____.._I-;i

i_===i

l

[ = i = = == = = = = == = ] [

iiii=l=ii==il=i=iiii============

*

[=I ~___;] [;;;;z ii==iiiii===iz ==== _____] [=;;; i=iiiz==iiiiiii===i==============_==== t

[===== i ===== i ili==iii 3ii==i ;;;;;;;;_, [_ii==== F__=;==_;;;;;=;, [ iii=iii=ii=i= iiZZiii== L--____--_____---____---____ Savofe ___________.____________-______--____________* l

TEXT TO SPEECH

[____---_-_______-__-__*

[;s;; [ i==i_iii=ii [;;;

Toa,

[=I

;;===;;;;=;;rt

Bernstein

1 [--__________-___’

____]

~_____*

I=1 I= ROSS

[ iiiii_i== I means already it TSI, joined project

Fig. 5. Professional

I

&= 5vor.y 1976

= means worked - means worked

r mean*hired

i

,975

staffing,

reading

machine

[=

Steele

==I

_______Ca,dwe,, ==w ,977

full time part time

project.

[;;;

co,,

I;]

[;;;;

,“r

;=;;;;=;_] Go,&,,,.

iii=iiii=iiiii=~iiii*

===x

,

_________

=====

,978

,

i= =iiiiiiiiii=ii

,979

ia

,

iiii==i=

1980

7 means fired or resigned d means left pqiect, l means continuing involvement

t

,

R.S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / University - IO-industry technology transfer

Table 1 R&D development

projects

and people at TSI

No. of R&D projects R&D workers a R.M. project workers TTS sub-project workers a Workers

= equivalent

full-time

1916

1977

1978

1979

1980

3+ 7 2 1

3+ 15 5 3

4+ 32 11 4

5+ 35 16 4

6+ 33 17 4

professionals

Table 2 Index of TSI sales and R&D expenses

Total sales sales Speech-related R&D expenses as percent of sales

(1976 total sales = 100).

1976

1917

1978

1979

1980

100 21 8 8%

127 25 11 9%

158 30 18 11%

203 41 29 14%

226 66 49 22%

financial support from TSI or NSF for participating in the transfer process [20]. There is a complete absence of any documentation of activity on the licensing issue during the third stage of the project, either by TSI or by M.I.T. The fourth stage of the project took place between June 1978 and August 1979. This was the adaptive phase of the technology transfer process. During this period the text-to-speech software was substantially changed by TSI in form and function. In late spring Jim Caldwell had written a draft specification of how the reading machine would work: [26] what the user controls would be, how the components would interact, what the range of speech rates would be, how error conditions would be handled, and so forth. While many of the ideas behind these specifications had been discussed all along by Caldwell, Savoie, and others, their for-

funded by outside agencies. Bliss, commenting in 1980, pointed out that return on investment analyses were done throughout the course of the project, and that the project always appeared to be economically justifiable, but only as outside funding was available for development [24]. Of course, another aspect of this support is that it made it very difficult for TSI to shelve the project. TSI depended heavily on a variety of federal programs, and, as Caldwell noted in 1981 [25], was very reluctant to jeopardize their reputation with federal funding agencies by backing out of a research and development commitment. The National Science Foundation was not the only agency to fund the reading machine project. Table 4 summarizes the outside support received through the end of 1980. All of the outside support went directly to TSI. According to Professor Allen, at no time did NLPG in particular, or M.I.T. in general, receive any

Table 3 Index of reading

machine

135

R&D expenses

Total R&D Reading machine project expenses TSI-funded reading machine expenses

(1976 total R&D = 100) 1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

100 9 6

140 38 18

224 80 32

361 160 102

615 55 0

136 Table

4

Outside

funding

for reading

machine

project.

SOUKC

Starting date

Duration (months)

Amount t$ooo)

For

(l)NSF (RANN) (2) The Seeing Eye, Inc. (3) NSF &ANN)

6/16 2/77 4178

18 12 18

I IO

(4) VA, Bureau of Education for Handicapped, Rehabilitation Services Administration (5) NSF (ASRA)

8/18

30

731

Simulation of reading machine VTM chip development Investigation of practical implementation of text-to-speech Completion of reading machine work

9/79

1%

157

malization and commitment to writing indicated a shift in the project orientation from technology assessment to adaptation. Goldhor returned to TSI to spend the summer in 1978, and wrote the basic functional specification of a text-to-speech program that would be appropriate for a reading machine. In many ways it was quite a different program from the research-oriented MSS. Goldhor designed and implemented a real-time control structure to serve as the “backbone”’ of the phonemic synthesis subsystem, and sketched out the language constructs that would be used to implement the linguistic rules of that subsystem. He returned to M.I.T. at the end of the summer, but left school within a month to begin working for TSI (in Boston) as a consultant on the text-to-speech project. At TSI, four more engineers joined the text-tospeech project. They began implementing the first M.I.T.-based, real-time system using two new Digital Equipment Corporation LSI-II microcomputers. The new system was implemented using assembly language programs rather than a higher level language such as M.I.T.‘s BCPL. This was done to ensure the fastest, most compact coding possible for the algorithms. Long after all of the programs had been translated into assembly language (an effort requiring around five programmer-years of work) it was discovered that the greatest amount of processing time was spent in a very small fraction of the entire code. Recoding 5 to 10 percent of the BCPL code into assembly language might have been sufficient to eliminate the speed problem. Whether leaving the rest of the programs in BCPL would still have created a memory size

115 99

Voice communications concepts

aids design

problem was never determined. At any rate, the major problem with leaving the programs in BCPL was that there was no commercially supported dialect or compiler for BCPL, and the M.I.T. programs had in fact been written in a dialect for which there was support only at M.I.T. At the same time that work was beginning on the reading machine text-to-speech system, other reading machine sub-projects were underway. Engineers were hired to evaluate the adequacy of the existing Optacon camera for reading machine use, and to develop substitutes if necessary. Other engineers began to develop an automatic page scanning subsystem for the reading machine. Still others began to develop the central controller software that would coordinate the operation of all the subsystems. Tentative decisions were made as to the processor that would be used for the prototype system. Jim Caldwell finished the formal specifications and logic design for the custom LSI VTM chips, and delivered them to the firm that had been contracted to do the actual LSI layout and manufacture, Dr. Gabriel Groner was hired as Senior Program Manager for TSI’s voice communications projects. Before coming to TSI, Groner had worked at the Rand Corporation designing and developing computer systems for medical researchers. He had also conducted research in speech and character recognition and interactive, user-oriented computer systems. While the technical efforts were being redoubled, Jim Bliss, Steve Brugler, and Gabe Groner attempted to settle the licensing issue with M.I.T. The first written record in the M.I.T. Patent Office file on the TSI case is of a conversation between Bliss and Thilly in February 1979 [27]. TSI was

R.S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / Unioers~~y - to industy.> technology rramfer

still pushing strongly for an exclusive license. M.I.T., on the other hand, was taking the position that federal government restrictions made it very difficult for them to grant such an exclusive license, and that they would much prefer to limit discussion to non-exclusive agreements. Apparently it was only at this point in time that the Patent Office discovered that Klatt was claiming personal equity in the phonemic synthesis programs. During this period TSI was becoming increasingly convinced that very little of the production version of the software needed to be licensed from M.I.T. In TSI’s view, much of the software had in fact been developed by TSI and much of the M.I.T. software had been deleted, and therefore TSI had no need to come to any agreement with M.I.T. [28]. The M.I.T. Patent Office, of course, indicated that it would be very unhappy about any attempt to market a reading machine without licensing the text-to-speech software [29]. TSI was also still engaged in licensing negotiations with Dennis Klatt for his phonemic synthesis programs. Work on the reading machine proceeded slowly but steadily, and in January 1979 a simple system, running on an LSI-I 1 and a PDP-11, was demonstrated to a visiting committee of experts in aids for the handicapped. This was the first time that an M.I.T.-derived system, running in real time, actually worked. In February 1979 Dr. Jared Bernstein, a phonetician from M.I.T.‘s Speech Communications group, was hired by TSl to be their in-house linguistics expert and to work on the text-to-speech project. Although Bernstein had never been a member of NLPG, he had worked with Klatt’s synthesizer at MIT. Caldwell, commenting later, identifies Bernstein’s hiring as significant: Up to this time all our effort had been focused on getting something going in real time.. . now we turned to the additional task of improving the modified system and adapting [it] to the particular constraints of applications in a reading machine. Jared’s arrival was thus a major departure from the past. [19] Jim Caldwell had been Project Leader of the text-to-speech effort since April 1977. During the first quarter of 1979 Ted Toal took over as Project Leader at Caldwell’s request, so that Caldwell would have more time to concentrate on the VTM chip effort.

137

By spring of 1979 the new TSI program was running sufficiently well for Goldhor to do an extensive analysis of its memory and processing requirements, dynamic characteristics, responsiveness to control sequences, etc. This analysis was an important step because both the MSS system and the new TSI system were sufficiently complicated that their actual performance under real-time conditions could not be determined analytically. Also in the spring of 1979 TSI developed its first software standards document, in an attempt to gain some control over the rapidly growing amount of program code its engineers were generating. The fifth stage of the project, between September 1979 and December 1980, involved the prototype development. Progress was steady and predictable. In early fall Rob Savoie worked out a detailed PERT chart of activities needed to develop an engineering prototype of the reading machine. Within reasonable bounds, the sequence and timing of activities indicated by this chart were actually followed. During the final quarter of 1979 Bernstein worked with Dr. David Pisoni of the Indiana University Psychology Department to evaluate the speech quality of the TSI text-tospeech system in a formal manner. The results, presented at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing in April 1980, were very encouraging: in a speciallydesigned reading comprehension test, there were no statistically significant differences between the comprehension of natural human speech, speech synthesized by the latest M.I.T. system, and the TSI system [30]. (This did not mean that the three varieties of speech sounded the same, were equally natural and pleasant to listen to, or even that they were equally intelligible on a phoneme-by-phoneme basis, but simply that, on the average, listerners were able to extract approximately the same amount of information from text passages read by the three sources.) In October 1979 TSI signed a non-exclusive license agreement with M.I.T. (311, and a separate non-exclusive license agreement with Dennis Klatt [32], for the use of the text-to-speech software. In Gabe Groner’s view, “it was very unclear whether TSI had to license anything. It was unclear what Klatt’s rights were to the programs, and what MIT’s were. TSI went overboard to make sure they were covered, and that everyone was happy.”

13x

R. S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / Unioersit.v

[28]. In the opinion of Diane Thilly, “TSI got a very favorable contract - almost a sweetheart contract.” [8]. Software activity during this period consisted of intensive debugging, improving the linguistic performance of the system, decreasing space and processing requirements, simplifying algorithms, nailing down the specifications of control sequences, and interfacing the text-to-speech system to the rest of the reading machine software. By the end April 1980, an engineering breadboard system was working. This system used all the hardware components that the final prototypes would use, and essentially the same software. The entire reading machine system was now capable of running over 100 hours at a time without “crashing.” The text-to-speed software for the initial product release was formally frozen at the end of August 1980. The first working custom VTM chips were delivered to TSI in September 1980. Testing revealed that further minor changes were still required, but fully working chips could be found by carefully screening the chips delivered. By the end of October a prototype reading machine was complete. Throughout the remainder of the year it was used almost constantly. In addition to being used as a reading machine, it was also used in conjunction with other TSI products in some unusual ways. An electronic braille notebook device was plugged into a special output port in the reading machine, a special control program was loaded, and the reading machine was used to scan text and transmit it to the braille notebook for transIation to Grade 1 braille, storage, and later playback. (In Grade 1 braille each braille character represents a single letter.) The reading machine was also combined with a communications aid for the severely motor-handicapped that was programmed to use the reading machine as a voice-output accessory. This combination was programmed to speak in a variety of voices, at different speech rates. both with pre-programmed phrases and with sentences generated spontaneously by the user of the communication device. As of the end of 1980 no further problems had been found with the text-to-speech software. By mid-December, five prototype units had been completed. At a site visit for representatives of sponsors of the reading machine project {Veterans

-to tndustrs twhnologv trcrtwfer

Administration, Office of Education, and National institute of Human Resources) the five units were lined up side by side and set to speaking simultaneously. The units worked flawlessly, and the sponsors expressed unanimous enthusiasm for the outcome of the project. The next week, a sixth unit was completed, and shipped to the Braille Institute in Los Angeles for evaluation. In February 1981 the other five units were to be delivered to Veterans Administration sites, also for evaluation. In the meantime, they were placed in the offices of TSI’s blind employees, who began using them in their daily work. Outcome for participants

through 1980

TSI’s goal in 1975 was to have an Optacon-based reading machine in production by the first quarter of 1979. The status of the reading machine pro_ject as of the end of 1980 can be summarized by the following excerpt from the Fall 1980, TSI newsletter: TSI has been engaged for several years in an intensive research program to develop a voice output reading system. Current plans are for a family of reading devices consisting of the present Optacon, a voice output accessory for the Optacon, and an automatic system independent of the Optacon. After several years of technical progress, the voice output accessory is now ready for substantial consumer involvement to formulate the final devices. As a result, TSI plans an extensive field evaluation of eight experimental machines with the aid of a grant from the Veterans Administration.. . The grant will provide major funding of this next step in the development of the reading machine. . . . The field experience will focus on consumer feedback while TSI continues with technical design and refinements to the system. Until the scope of our improvements to the design can be determined by the field evaluation, the exact timing and pricing of manufactured devices are necessarily uncertain, Readers will note that these are changes from previous announcements of expected schedules and

R.S. Goldhor and R. T Lund / University -to indumy

prices. TSI remains com~tted to the objectives of high performance, transportable, personallyowned voice output reading systems, and technical progress to date is most encouraging. [33] Despite the absence to date of a commercially available reading machine, TSI has moved aggressively to take advantage of its expertise in speech synthesis. Throughout th? first half of 1980, TSI’s management actively assessed the market for general speech products, and TSI’s interest in pursuing that market. In the spring of 1980, the board of directors voted to establish a new division of TSI, called the Speech Systems Division, to develop, manufacture, and market a variety of synthetic speech devices and services. This new division was formally established June 1, 1980, with Gabe Groner as director. It took on responsibility for converting the reading machine text-to-speech sub-system into a m&h lower cost, single board. general purpose pioduct that might be sold to other equipment manufacturers. The Natural Language Processing Group was actively involved during 1979 and 1980 in disseminating its text-to-speech knowledge and system. In 1979 the group brought its active research to a close by repackaging the MSS system, renaming it “MITALK ‘79,” and making it available for licensing. It was specifically advertised as a research system, not an application-oriented system. It was made available to non-profit organizations on a no-fee basis, and to private companies for a fee. M.I.T. offered both a research-only license, and a different (generally more expensive) license for companies wishing to use the system to develop a product for sale. By the end of 1980 over a half dozen non-profit organizations had licensed MITALK ‘79 for research use, and a moderate amount of license fees had been received [34]. In 1979, when the MITALK ‘79 system was ready, NLPG held a summer course at M.I.T. on text-to-speech translation. The notes of this course are being reworked into a book. By the end of 1980 the main research focus of the NLPG had moved from speech synthesis to speech understanding. The text-to-speech system was seen as complete and stable, although improved algorithms for some of the individual modules were still of interest. and work was beginning on a custom LSI chip for the package’s vocal tract model. (This was to be a more complex and high-

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precision processor than TSI’s chip set.) Professor Allen was also interested in the possibility of implementing a single-wafer VLSI version of MITALK ‘79 [35].

4. Analysis 4.1. Recapitulation TSI is an aggressive small company with a strong self-image of technical sophistication and creativity. In 1975 they were growing rapidly, had a successful primary product, and had just completed a second product development effort that involved synthetic speech and microprocessor technologies. The announcement of the Kurzweil and the implications of Reading Machine, Kurzweil’s encroachment on TSI’s product area, funding sources, and customer base, represented a challenge TSI could not ignore. TSI’s response was to develop a reading machine of their own - a better machine: less expensive, with greater utility and producing higher quality speech. The response was largely dictated by their self-image, their corporate experience, and the experience of Bliss and Savoie with reading machine simulations. A significant aspect of TSI’s corporate experience was finding federal and other non-commercial support for the development and distribution of high-technology products. The apparent availability of federal financial support for the development of a reading machine was an important argument in favor of attempting the project. A reading machine product was a “natural” for TSI: potential sponsors could easily understand the product and see the need for it, and potential customers reacted with enthusiasm. It seemed an exciting product for an exciting company with exciting technological credentials. The decision to develop a very sophisticated product over a relatively short amount of time, in the face of TSI’s small size and its other commitments, provided strong reasons for acquiring the text-to-speech technology from an outside source. M.I.T.‘s Natural Language Processing Group was an obvious source for that technology: personal contacts already existed between Professor Allen and Bliss, NLPG had a first-rate reputation, and

the NLPG technology seemed ripe for commercial application. From NLPG’s point of view, TSI’s interest in their programs came at a time when the practical applications of their research was a key issue with the M.I.T. group’s sponsors. In a sense, TSI’s need was to find a technology to implement their product, while M.I.T. needed to find a product to demonstrate their technology. To both parties the match between these needs seemed nearly perfect, and neither party felt the need to explore in detail how the transfer would occur, how much adaptation would be required, or how the licensing issues would be settled. Both parties’ enthusiasm for the venture, and NSF’s supporting grant in the spring of 1976, started the project off on a high note. The subsequent difficulties in getting the text-to-speech software running at TSI did not reach a critical stage until the spring of 1977, when the inability of TSI to produce a tape recording of speech synthesized in their lab brought home sharply to TSI’s management the uncertain status of the transfer attempt, and TSI’s strong dependence on M.I.T. TSI’s response to that crisis was to reaffirm the company’s commitment to employing the highest quality speech available. The decision was made to hire additional engineers, and use members of the donor group as consultants. Goldhor’s work in the summer of 1977 included leading seminars on computational linguistics and speech synthesis: the first time an organized attempt was made to transfer text-to-speech know4edge (as opposed to software) to the TSI engineering department. By the end of 1977 an M.I.T.-like system was running, but not in real-time, on a large computer, and a very simple non-M.I.T.-based system was running in real time on a microcomputer and VOTRAX synthesizer. The M.I.T.-like system allowed TSI to demonstrate their prospective speech quality, while the simple system allowed them to demonstrate the real-time response of the reading machine. But if TSI was becoming more comfortable with the abstract concepts of text-to-speech. it still had not fully dealt with the implications of the size and complexity of M.I.T.‘s implementation of those concepts. The next crisis came in the spring of 1978, when a combination of impressive showings by Kurzweil, a lack of progress in developing a real-time version of the MIT software, and an

increasing reluctance on the part of NLPG to get involved in development issues forced TSI once again to choose between abandoning the transfer effort and increasing their level of effort. This crisis revolved around the organizational capacity of TSI to develop a product as complex as a reading machine. Once more. TSI’s response was to reaffirm their commitment to both the technology and the product, and seek to solve their problems by increased staffing. The fact that TSI had just received another grant from NSF to continue adapting the M.I.T. technology must have been a factor in their decision to continue. The first TSI-developed, real-time, M.I.T.-based text-to-speech system was demonstrated in January of 1979. This was still a very rudimentary system, and required two laboratory minicomputers to run. Nevertheless it was a psychologically important event because it demonstrated that TSI had substantially internalized the M.I.T. text-to-speech technology and adapted it to their own uses. Relatively steady, if still slow, progress continued throughout 1979 and 1980. The Speech Division was established in mid-1980, and by the end of 1980 a prototype reading machine, including a working high-quality text-to-speech system, had been completed. At the end of this time it was clear that the technology transfer effort had succeeded. Whether or not the originally conceived product - a reading machine for the blind - would be successfully and profitably marketed remained an open question. TSI still needed to find a way to produce this complex product reliably and cheaply. Further, because of changing federal priorities and funding levels, TSI once more had to assess the size of the market for reading machines. The technology transfer effort - or more precisely the expertise TSI developed in its effort to make that transfer succeed - has engendered a variety of product and service possibilities in the speech systems field. Ultimately, these may turn out to be much more important to the company than the original product. 4.2. Summury

of crises

We have identified a number of “crisis” points in the case history. By “crisis” we mean a point in time when a significant problem has become evi-

R.S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / Unroersity

dent to a participant, who makes a clearly identifiable response. The crises we have identified are: For TSI: Announcement of the Kurzweil Reading Machine (1975). For NLPG: Need to demonstrate the utility of the group’s research results (1975-76). For TSI: Failure to transfer the M.I.T. software successfully (March 1977). For NLPG: Pressure from TSI to devote NLPG resources to application-oriented problems in adapting the M.I.T. software (late 1977, early 1978). For TSI: Unsatisfactory progress on the reading machine development, including unsatisfactory progress in adapting the M.I.T. software for reading machine application ( 1978). For TSI: Unresolved questions about the market for the reading machine product; continuing lack of a marketable text-to-speech system (1980). It is worth pointing out that TSI responded in a consistent manner to each crisis: in each case it reaffirmed the importance of the reading machine product and speech synthesis technology to the future of the company, increased the development resources it was allocating to the project (except in 1980) and continued to search for outside sources of funding. In preparing this study it seemed at first that the licensing questions, and the long delays in negotiating a settlement that was agreeable to both TSI and M.I.T., constituted an important crisis. During interviews both parties mentioned their frustration over the licensing problem. In retrospect, however, the entire licensing issue seems to be important only as a source of friction between the two participants. It appears that both parties, at one time or another, were the source of long delays in the negotiations, and it is not apparent that either party was significantly hurt by those delays. In fact, both parties seem to have benefited from the delays by gaining a better understanding of the relative contributions of each participant to the final commercial technology. Presumably this understanding made it easier to agree on the terms of the license. 4.3. Role of participunts In this instance cipient organization,

of technology transfer the reTSI, clearly played the largest

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role. The project’s duration, crises, and ultimate success were strongly influenced by the character of the recipient. TSI’s lack of experience with complex software systems and with this particular kind of long-distance technology transfer led them into a project that was much more difficult than they imagined. Their strong self-image as an innovative high-technology leader in their field resulted in an unshakeable commitment to both the reading machine product and the MIT. technology. It seems clear that Bliss, the company’s president, was an important champion of the project throughout. TSI’s familiarity with federal and other nonprofit of funding for their products and development projects meant that they were only loosely coupled to hard market considerations in their decision-making. This opened up a number of opportunities for them, but also perhaps locked them into continuing along a course that would ultimately prove unprofitable or only marginally profitable. TSI was growing rapidly during the period covered by this study, and many of the problems with the text-to-speech project can be traced to that rapid growth. The growth was particularly rapid in the engineering department, so that not only was that department much larger in absolute size at the end of the period than at the beginning, but it was larger in relationship to the rest of the company. The same can be said of the engineering budget, which by the end of 1980 had grown to over 20 percent of the company’s revenues. The character of the donor group - NLPG also affected the transfer effort. From within an academic setting the group seemed have a strong engineering flavor - their output was working programs, rather than just journal articles. Nevertheless, this emphasis on demonstrable algorithms did not extend to an interest in developing applications for speech synthesis. Professor Allen saw this distinction quite clearly, and acted strongly and consistently to maintain the research focus of the group. Apparently TSI did not understand this distinction when the transfer effort began. Finally, it is clear that NLPG seriously underestimated the difficulty of converting their software into a practical real-time system. The situation, then, was of two quite disparate groups, each trying to estimate their own and the other group’s capabilities in a venture that neither

had tried before, and with no way of evaluating the reliability of their own estimates, let alone the other group’s estimate. With the best intentions. both groups overestimated their own - and their partner’s - capabilities. The National Science Foundation played a very restricted role in brokering and monitoring the transfer effort and subsequent development. Its participation was limited to trying to estimate in advance whether the project could succeed. Their organizational structure, procedures, and capabilities gave them little opportunity to affect the project once it was under way. The M.I.T. Patent Office was seriously hampered by (1) its unfamiliarity with the technology being exported; (2) its inexperience in licensing M.I.T.-developed software for commercial use; (3) the fact that TSI was radically changing the original programs; (4) the uncertainty as to the ultimate commercial value of the property; (5) the complex, inconsistent, and rapidly changing laws governing copyrights and licensing of federally funded research; and (6) its own small size and rapid turnover of staff. The delay in settling the licensing issue was a source of friction to both M.I.T. and TSI, but it is doubtful that either party was really injured by that delay, just as it is unclear which party, if either, the final settlement favored. Richard Goldhor played the role of a technology transfer agent in this case. As a graduate student at M.I.T., he was well versed in the theoretical and engineering issues implicit in the MSS algorithms. His work at TSI during the summers of 1977 and 1978 provided him with the insight into the practical requirements of commercial real-time text-to-speech systems and and gave him the point-of-view necessary for educating TSI engineers about synthesis technology. As a member of both groups, he served as a convenient and efficient conduit of information and requests for help - albeit at some expense to his perceived “loyalty” to either group. 4.4. Market

considerutions

Given the close timing in 1975 of the Kurzweil Computer Products announcement of a speechoutput reading machine and the intiation of discussions between Bliss and Allen, it is apparent that the competitive threat of the new company

was a triggering event in TSI’s decision to develop a reading machine, and to adopt M.I.T.‘s text-tospeech system. It is unlikely that the motivation to respond with a competitive system came entirely from consideration of the size of the market of profit potential. A total market of 500 to 1000 units representing $5 to $10 million in sales was not an overwhelming opportunity, particularly in view of the technical challenge and the implied costs of the project, and the existence of a competitive product already in the market. The TSI response was strongly motivated by the challenge to TSI’s supremacy in high technology aids to the and the implications of losing handicapped, momentum in a product area with great humanitarian appeal and long-term potential. The market for a high-priced, large, non-portable system may have been modest, but the possibility of subsequent generations of personal readers would have been recognized. The stimulus of competition from a rival firm was effectively described by Schumpeter in 1942: In capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not that kind of competition which counts (competition that is, within a rigid pattern of invariant conditions of production) but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of .. supply 5 the new type of organization. competition which strikes not at the margins of the profits, and the outputs of existing firms, but at their very lives. This kind of competition is as much more effective than the other as a bombardment is in comparison with forcing a door, and so much more important that it becomes a matter of comparative indifference whether competition in the ordinary sense functions more or less promptly. [36. p. 841 The limited opportunity for a return on investment meant, however, that an alternate, non-investment form of R&D funding was needed, and the federal and private funding agencies that were to provide over $1.2 million became a means of reducing the level of risk, while causing only modest diversion from TSI’s own financial resources. Although the market for a reading machine could be readily appreciated, particularly for personalized, portable systems, the market for other devices centered on the M.I.T. text-to-speech component of the system was not clear. This compo-

R.S. Goldhor und R. T. Lund / Umoersrty

nent might be superior to any other system that synthesized speech from basic linguistic rules but there was a developing rival technology in encoded speech systems that would provide at least shortterm competition with the speech ~yn~~e~~~ approach. Such encoded systems (TSI had one) depended on large capacity, high quality, fixed vocabulary memories, and the costs of these could be expected to decrease in pace with general LSI costs, Ultimately, the flexibility, versatility and capacity of the synthesized speech approach could be expected to compete successfully with these fixed-vocabulary systems, but only after design problems were worked out and costs were significantly reduced. The opportunity for spin-off products from the text-to-speech, then, was largely limited to future possibilities rather than immediately exploitable options. In summary, the modest market opportunities for reading machine and/or alternative applications for the text-to-speech subsystem could not support a very large private R&D investment. Use of supplemental grants and development contracts were essential, therefore, to the furtherance of the project. 4.5. Time and expense unulysis Six years elapsed from the time that TSI first responded to the competitive challenge of the Kurzweil Reading Machine to the time that a completed prototype reading machine was ready for outside evaluation. Presumably a minimum of one or two years will be required to complete the human factors analysis, design and build a production prototype, and begin producing and shipping the initial production model of the reading machine. By TSI standards this six to eight year development time was overly long. It was more than twice the time required for any other product TSI was currently producing. Possibly the reading machine _ at least in the form it was conceived of by TSI was simply too complex a product for a company with TSI’s limited resources and other R&D commitments to develop in an optimal length of time. Table 1 shows the amount of engineering resources absorbed by the reading machine project, and by the text-to-speech subproject: a total of 51 professional engineer-years for the overall project,

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of which 16 were devoted to the transfer and adaptation of the text-to-speech technology. During the final two years (1979 and 1980) approximately 50 percent of TSI’s engineers were working on the reading machine, at a time when five or six other products were also under development. The text-to-speech subproject absorbed about 12 percent of TSI’s engineering resources during this period. Certainly this activity contributed heavily to the very rapid growth of TSI’s engineering department - a growth that significantly outstripped the growth of the rest of the company. TSI’s engineering department budget jumped dramatically from an initial 8 percent of sales in 1976 to 22 percent in 1980 (table 2). Also shown in table 2 is the steady growth in speech-related sales. Because the M.I.T.-based text-to-speech system was still under development, all of the speech related revenue during this period was from nonM.I.T. technology. It might be argued that the transfer of the M.I.T. technology provided an expertise in speech technology and a promise of diversity of speech-related products that encouraged continued involvement in speech technology. To a large extent, however, TSI simply had a marketable technology and product in its preM.I.T. encoded speech systems, and exploited that technology in a straightforward manner. Table 3 shows how the reading machine project expenses were shared between TSI and outside funding sources. Clearly the project has been expensive for TSI: 46 percent of the costs were internally funded. This is the equivalent of 2 percent of sales for each of the years between 1976 and 1980. The 54 percent of project costs that were externally-funded provided TSI with an important source of revenue. As reported earlier, the return on investment for the reading machine would have been inadequate to justify its development in the absence of such support. However, TSI’s dependence on external development support presented its own problems, in particular, the substantial expansion of its engineering department, and the need, or at least temptation, to continue depending heavily on government grants and contracts for funding. This uneasy state of affairs-is typical of small companies that depend on federal support. A 1980 study of 30 small high technology companies concludes that:

~Although] government R&D contracts provided an important source of funding for the development of technology and expertise later used commercially by [these companies]. . . [these funds] frequently proved to be a mixed blessing. Government funding is somewhat erratic and undependable, and the rules for awarding it, as well as the amounts available. can change on a moment’s notice. Abrupt changes in government research, fiscal and procurement policies have posed severe problems for many of the companies in our study. 1371 The general procurement guidelines and accounting procedures required for government R&D contract sales tend to inhibit the kinds of market orientation and business attitudes necessary to commercialize technology. [37]

4.6. A working model Our case suggests a technology transfer model that seems particularly appropriate for the university to high-technology industry situation. This model (see fig. 6) incorporates both the positive aspects of our current case, and also those missing characteristics, roles, and activities whose presence could have hastened, simplified, or enhanced the success of the project. The transfer process itself is the central element of the model, bridging the

disparate cultures of the donor and recipient organizations. We show the transfer agent as the keystone to a solid technology transfer bridge. Transferring the source technology across the bridge is a sequential process involving steps of adaptation and utilization that may change the technology into something quite different from that issuing from the source. Each of the participants and technologies can be described in terms of ideal characteristics that maximize the possibility for successful transfer. As we discuss these characteristics, we will attempt to show how they were present (or missing) in the M.I.T./TSI case, and how that affected the outcome. 4.7. Source technology Ideally, a source technology that is a candidate for transfer will be revolutionary, extensible, ripe, defensible and portable. A revolutionary technology is more valuable to industry than an evolutionary one, assuming that it meets the other criteria. As Bucy [3X] points out, the more revolutionary a technology is, the less likely it is that potential recipients can accomplish similiar advances by other means. If the advance is merely evolutionary, there may be other ways for industry to acquire it that entail lower risks than technology transfer. In our case, the M.I.T. speech technology was highly advanced, if not absolutely

ACADEMIC

INDUSTRIAL

CULTURE

CULTURE

i’

Fig. 6. Technology

transfer

model.

\

R.S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / Unwersity

revolutionary. The value of this is indicated by the fact that even after a five year development delay, TSI’s technology was unmatched, and not even seriously challenged, by any other commercial speech technology. An extensible technology is one that can form the basis for a variety of target technologies, and which can be extended by the recipient’s own research, thus forming the basis for a wide variety of products or processes. Use of the reading machine as a communications aid for the motor handicapped (as opposed to the visually handicapped) was mentioned earlier. The M.I.T. technology has a moderate potential for extension, and TSI plans to explore that potential as a means of improving speech quality, lowering product costs, and finding new markets. A ripe technology is one on which sufficient basic research has been completed to allow commercial exploitation to begin, and for which the technical means for commercial development exist. The MIT. software is a prime example: the basic research objectives had been accomplished, and further advances were either a matter of “fine tuning” or required initiating a completely new and long-range research program. In addition, recent and projected advances in microprocessors offered a reliable, low-cost method for industrial implementation. An important point here, and one that was perhaps not sufficiently understood by either M.I.T. or TSI, is that a large gap remains between laboratory demonstrations and commercial utilization. From M.I.T.‘s point of view, they had a working text-to-speech system. TSI originally accepted this point of view without realizing how different M.I.T.‘s research system was from the production text-to-speech system they were envisioning. In fact, this and several other related experiences have made TSI extremely cautious about accepting university-engineered “ hard” technology. They have found that they always have to go back to the basic ideas and re-do the engineering [39]. A defensible technology is one for which the donor can offer the recipient some form of protection against acquisition by competitors. A patent or other form of exclusive license is an example. Since much university research is federally funded, it is often difficult to offer potential recipients traditional forms of protection. This was a serious

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concern to TSI in the present case. Ultimately their best protection turned out to be the complexity of the software and M.I.T.‘s disinterest in participating in another such transfer. In effect, TSI obtained protection by virtue of the effort they invested in making the M.I.T. system commercially valuable. A portable technology is one that can be removed from its university setting and physically transferred to industry without extraordinary effort. It should not require exotic equipment or training, be hampered by legal or political roadblocks, or lack adequate documentation. The M.I.T. software was defective in this latter characteristic, requiring a non-standard compiler, and being largely undocumented. This created serious problems for TSI during the physical transfer phase, and during the evaluation phase. 4.8. Target technology An appropriate target technology is one that satisfies a specific need, has a sufficiently large market, can be protected, and has a reasonable expansion potential. Satisfying specific needs provides an optimal method of keeping technology transfer on track [40]. TSI had a very clear need - to build a reading machine - and was able to establish specific adaptation goals for the research software. (As the work proceeded, other specific needs became evident, which in turn led to other adaptation goals.) Market size is important because of the cost and difficulty of technology transfer. TSI was seriously limited in the funds they could invest in the early stages of the transfer process, because of the limited market for a reading machine. Without outside funds such as the RANN grant, it would not have been possible to finance the effort at all. Toward the later part of the transfer the speech technology market expanded rapidly, and sufficient funds for speech innovation became easier to justify from an investment viewpoint. A target technology that can be protected is important for obvious reasons. TSI’s primary protection has been to keep their text-to-speech software a trade secret. Expansion potential is important. Because the real payoff for technology transfer may come from secondand third-generation products, growth

potential for the target technology is in~portant. Certainly in the case of TSI, the products of the new Speech Systems Division may generate far more revenue than the still non-existent reading machine. 4.9. Donor In university-to-industry technology transfer the immediate donor will normally be the research group that develops the source technology. The ideal donor would be a good cotnmunicator, have industrial development and technology transfer experience, and be strongly motivated to make the technology transfer succeed. The reality of the university environment often conflicts strongly with these ideals. Communications ability is of primary importance because the most important thing being transferred is knowledge. In our case, members of NLPG had extensive experience teaching their material to students. During the summer of 1976 Goldhor presented a series of seminars at TSI on speech synthesis using much the same teaching methods. The results were relatively good, and started TSI on its way to mastering the concepts embodied in the M.I.T. software. However, a much stronger educational component should have been built into the initial transfer plans. Experience with industrial innovation, management, and technology transfer would be ideal characteristics for a donor group. Unfortunately many university researchers lack such experience. None of the NLPG members had prior experience with technology transfer, and none was familiar with the problems of developing production software. Motivation is probably the key problem for many potential donors. In most university research environments there are few rewards for engaging in technology transfer: it does not assure professors of tenure, staff members of promotions, or graduate students of degrees, For the research foundation or government agency funding the university research, industrial technology transfer may be of only peripheral interest. as was true in this case. The lack of a reward structure for participating in technology transfer can paralyze a group that might be ideally capable in all other respects. It induced the M.I.T. group to limit its involvement with TSI. Whether NSF could have, or should

have, sought to increase the motivation cooperation is an interesting question.

for closer

4. IO. Recipient In the university-to-industry transfer setting, where the recipient is a high-technology company, much of the burden of success rests with the recipient. The ideal recipient would have a basic familiarity with the technology to be transferred; academic, innovation, and technology transfer experience; the goal of acquiring expertise in the technology; sufficient resources to accomplish the transfer; and a strong motivation to make the transfer succeed. A basic familiarity with the technology will enable the recipient to negotiate with the donor, plan effectively for the transfer, and assess the quality of the technology received. TSI had little familiarity with either computational linguistics or large software systems. Thus, for instance, they were misled by overly optimistic assurances from NLPG regarding the ease of transferring the software. Prior experience with academic organizations and with innovation and technology transfer processes will ease the management of the transfer. All of the top managers and engineers at TSI had academic backgrounds and extensive innovation experience, but were unfamiliar with technology transfer and thus seriously underestimated its difficulty. Acquiring expertise should be an explicit goal for the recipient. We have stressed several times in previous chapters that TSI seems to have initiated the technology transfer process in an attempt to avoid acquiring expertise, or at least to avoid acquiring it until after the reading machine was in production. This proved to be impossible. Technology transfer is, at heart, the transfer of technical knowledge - expertise - from one organization to another. Sufficient resources are as important in technology transfer projects as with any other kind of innovation. One reason five years were required for the M.I.T./TSI transfer was that TSI was consistently limited in the amount of funds they could invest in the transfer. For instance, in the first year serious practical problems were caused by the difficulty of transferring programs from M.I.T. to TSI. There was no secondary storage

R. S. Goidhor

and R. T. Lund

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device that the two groups had in common, and transferring programs involved using a third computer owned by another research organization several miles from TSI. It is at least possible that a $20,000 investment in another computer system for M.I.T. that exactly duplicated TSI’s, could have saved many months of delay during the first two years of the project, and could have increased M.I.T.‘s commitment to the project. Motivation, once again, is the key ingredient in technology transfer. In the case of university-to-industry transfer, the industrial recipient may often have the most to gain from a successful transfer, and thus be more strongly motivated than the donor. TSI demonstrated a determination to succeed that may even have gone beyond the bounds of what could be rationally justified. It is worth noting that one of the “champions” of the technology transfer cause was Jim Bliss - the president of TSI. 4. I 1. Transfer agent Experience with technology transfer has repeatedly demonstrated the value of a third party in the transfer process: an individual or organiinnovator, zation that can act as “ technologist, adviser, broker, or catalyzer.” [38]. An effective transfer agent can make up for many deficiencies in the other participants: lack of experience, training capacity, etc. The ideal transfer agent will be independent of the donor and recipient, have the backing of a strong organization, and be an active partner in the transfer process. In the early stages of a technology transfer effort, the transfer agent can serve as matchmaker, not only matching the capabilities of the source technology with the requirements of the envisioned target technology, but also educating the donor and recipient as to the nature of technology. transfer, and helping them develop a formal or informal “contract” that spells out the needs and commitments of both sides. In the learning phase, the transfer agent can provide technical expertise, and in all phases can act as a translator between the two cultures, provide process consulting, help smooth out legal problems, find financial support from government and private agencies, and provide genera1 encouragement when, as will inevitably happen, the technology transfer hits some rough spots.

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The National Science Foundation had the opportunity to act as a transfer agent, but did so only to a very limited extent. It provided early encouragement to TSI, and funded the transfer through two grants. It did not, however, get involved in the transfer process itself in any way. This contrasts with other federal agencies, most notably NASA [38] and the Field Extension Service of the Department of Agriculture [40], that have very successfully supported technology transfer via active and creative funding, liason, and mutual education of donors and recipients. Richard Goldhor served as a de facto transfer agent during much of the project. He provided technical advice and a channel for the informal exchange of information between TSI and M.I.T. Goldhor’s effectiveness in this capacity, however, was limited by a number of factors: a predominantly academic background; a lack of industrial and transfer experience; a lack of independence because of his membership in both the donor and recipient organizations; and lack of formal recognition of his role as transfer agent. 4.12. Steps in the transfer process Having characterized the technologies and actors, or roles, in our model, we now turn to the transfer process itself. We have shown that technology transfer is a fragile social process that involves a particular kind of interaction between two groups of people: the transfer and adaptation of knowledge. Like most processes, technology transfer has an inherent sequential character to it: it naturally involves a series of steps, and the usual penalty for attempting to “short circuit” any step is that the following steps are delayed, lengthened or made impossible. Our working model shows four steps to the path over the technology transfer bridge: searching, learning, adapting, and using. Searching involves not only finding a source and target technology that match, but also a donor and recipient organization that can work together, and that have the requisite characteristics. Ideally, sufficient effort will be spent by both donor and recipient to make sure that they have the skills, motivation, and resources to make the transfer succeed. In retrospect it is this stage, more than any other, that was inadequately carried out by NLPG, TSI, and NSF. Learning is the vital second stage of technology

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transfer. It is the most important transfer mechanism. Interestingly, it is an activity that universities should be expert in. However, donors, recipients, and sponsors must realize that it is expensive both in time and money. One approach by which learning can take place is via an exchange of personnel between recipient and donor organizations, such as Goldhor’s summer employment at TSI. Adaptation is the third stage of technology transfer. Once the recipient organization has internalized the relevant knowledge about the source technology, it must begin adapting it to its own needs. This stage places special requirements on both the recipient and donor organizations. The recipient organization must realize that it is time to try its own wings; they cannot continue to depend on the donor indefinitely. Especially as they move toward the target technology, there will be more and more technical questions that the donor will not be able to answer. The donor, on the other hand, must be willing to “let go” of the technology; allowing the recipient to modify. expand, simplify, and otherwise corrupt what has been regarded as an elegant piece of work representing many years of research and feelings of personal pride and ownership. An ideal attitude would be for the donor to view the adaptation process as a source of ideas and stimulus for further research. Utilization of the target technology is the ultimate test of success of the transfer attempt. It is, unfortunately, the step in the transfer process that seems to be most often missing, and hardest to identify. We offer a tentative hypothesis that the result of technology transfer often will not be a product per se, but rather a series of related products (“cousins” of the intended product), or an increase in expertise, or the acquisition of personnel. Eaton Corporation’s first venture into microprocessor applications [41] produced such a result. The target product was not marketed, but a series of simpler versions were produced and technical know-how was substantially enhanced. An important implication of this hypothesis is that it may be a mistake to try to measure the success of technology transfer efforts by a simple determination of whether the originally-envisioned product was ever put into production.

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5. Policy implications 5.1. For the recipient organizution The technology transfer case and the associated transfer model we have discussed carry some clear policy implications for commercial organizations considering a transfer of technology from a university research setting. Above all, there must be a fundamental appreciation that technology transfer of this kind is the transfer of knowledge between different cultures, for the purpose of commercial innovation. Although technology transfer inherently involves risk and uncertainty, positive management steps may be taken to predict, minimize, and control that risk and uncertainty. The best first step is an appreciation that technology transfer is an expensive, time consuming social process that requires a high level of organizational commitment to be successful. Its potential effect on a small company is similiar to that of a major drive to develop a new product line. Either in success or failure it is likely to change the character of the company in radical and irreversible ways. Technology transfer is a sequential process, and the recipient organization must carefully manage each stage of the process. During the search stage any technology transfer opportunity must be carefully evaluated. Some of the important questions to ask are:

(1) What are the recipient organization’s

technical and managerial capabilities? Weaknesses? What resources can it devote to the transfer? technical (2) What are the donor organization’s and managerial capabilities? Weaknesses? What resources can it devote to the transfer? (3) What is the potential payoff for the recipient organization? What are the risks’ payoff for the donor (4) What is the potential organization? What are its risks? It is important for the recipient organization to match, either internally or externally via a transfer agent, the general technical expertise of the donor organization. Only by doing this can the recipient reliably appraise the capabilities, technology, and claims of the donor. TSI’s failure to obtain this matching extertise was the source of considerable delay and uncertainty in the eariy stages of the text-to-speech transfer.

R.S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / University.

A serious attempt should be made to establish a transfer management plan, with realistic milestone specifications and time and resource estimates. It is important that these specifications and estimates reflect the sequential, knowledge-oriented, product-directed nature of the transfer process. The transfer project needs a champion. Precisely because it is an expensive, difficult, risky undertaking it needs someone with authority and resources to push it, guide it, and defend it. Because a project of this type has such potential for radically changing the recipient organization, the ideal champion would be one of the top managers of the company. During the second stage of the transfer process the recipient must learn the new technology. The most efficient way for people in the recipient organization to learn is directly from those who are familiar with the new material, and who also “speak the language” of the recipient organization. A variety of arrangements may allow for this person-to-person interaction: temporary exchanges of personnel between the donor and recipient organization, the permanent hiring of a member of the donor organization by the recipient organization, part time consulting by a donor member, etc. In many cases the best way to enhance the speed and efficiency of the learning and adaptation stages of the transfer is to make use of a transfer agent. Ideally. this person (or organization) would be familiar with the source technology, have industrial research and development experience, and would be a good communicator. Because technology transfer is a social process that requires mutual respect between all parties, it is advantageous for the transfer agent to have good academic and industrial credentials. Peake 1401 stresses the importance of the transfer agent being independent of both the recipient and donor organizations, but the agent must have a clear understanding of the product development goals of the recipient. The final stage of the transfer process is the innovative use of the technology in a commercial product. Although in many cases unexpected product and market opportunities will arise as the technology transfer proceeds, the recipient in the search stage should be able to articulate clear, objective reasons for engaging in the technology transfer. The potential market for the target tech-

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nology should be large enough that the recipient can wholeheartedly commit sufficient resources to the transfer to maximize the chances of completing it successfully in a reasonable amount of time. If the product innovation goals require market development as well as product development, this fact should be explicitly acknowledged. The need for market development may substantially increase the cost and risk of the project. 5.2. For the university

as donor ~r~anizat~~~

The academic environment imposes serious limitations to innovation and directed technology transfer. The university is structured to provide general dissemination of knowledge through teaching and student participation in research and through seminars, conferences, and publication of papers. However, when it comes to directed technology transfer, where, as in the text-to-speech case, a specific body of knowledge is to be transferred to a single private firm, the university has its drawbacks. The motivation among faculty for such technology transfer tends to be weak. Rewards are limited: there are no opportunities for career enhancement, no academic recognition, and there may or may not be any direct financial compensation. Instead, the faculty member may encounter active forms of discouragement from others of faculty rank. Merely associating with a commercial enterprise may involve a lowering of social status [42]. To engage seriously in effecting a transfer of technology requires an unusually high level of personal commitment from the faculty member(s) involved. Frequently, the process of technology transfer becomes a “spin-out” of the academic researcher into private enterprise. The motivation may be financial gain, but it may also stem from frustration with attempting to accomplish the technology transfer within the constraints of the academic environment. The result for the university is the loss of an innovative researcher, and the statistically low probability of success of new ventures testifies to the perils to the researcher in such a decision. It is unlikely that faculty attitudes toward directed technology transfer will change greatly. A tension between scientific inquiry and practical application can be healthy. The university, how-

ever, can seek to provide some rewards that encourage the faculty member to be involved in directed techology transfer and yet remain in the university. Financial rewards are possible through the licensing process. M.I.T. shares its royalty income with the inventors. The Institute also provides contractual assistance in negotiating the agreement. Earlier in the process, the Institute may be active in marketing the invention and giving it publicity. These forms of positive assistance are particularly helpful to the inventor who is a novice in the area of commercial exploitation of ideas. Other forms of managerial assistance may be useful. One major shortcoming described in the case was M.I.T.‘s failure to recognize the inadequate technical capacity of the recipient group. What was needed was an early, dispassionate appraisal of that capability, and an insistence that the recipient organization be fully capable of handling the technology during and after the transfer. If the university is to be a continuing source of technology, it must have in residence the ability to assess the technical competence of the recipient group and to suggest means of providing matching competences. Just as it is essential to the recipient group, a project management plan is necessary for the donor group. The plan should dovetail with that of the recipient group, and there should be mutuallyagreed-upon milestone dates, review procedures, and status reports. As the source of the technology, the university should recognize the need for a transfer agent, should assist in identifying who that person or group of people is, and should assist in defining the transfer agent’s role in the process. This case illustrates one other policy implication for the university. The downstream costs and effort on the part of the recipient, once the technology has been transferred, can be very large. They can exceed the initial R&D costs by an order of magnitude or more. It is important that those involved in royalty negotiations be cognizant of this fact, so that the assessment of the worth of the technology transferred is not exaggerated. Overly high financial expectations may short-circuit the opportunity for a successful transfer. 5.3. For the funding agency As in this case, the public interest may be involved in attempting to put a technical idea to

practical use. Where the benefits of that technology are too widely diffused or where the risks of failure are too high, public assistance may be the only way to effect the transfer and use of a technology. In the M.I.T.-TSI case, several agencies provided funding, and this was about all they provided. None of the agencies functioned in either a technical or managerial role. We believe there is room for a more active part in the technology transfer process for the funding agency, particularly during its early stages. If the funding agency wishes to have a high batting average of successes, it must develop means to appraise the motivation that resides in the donor-recipient relationship that will drive the technology transfer to completion. Unless this motivation exists on both sides, the chances of success are greatly reduced and the costs of the attempt will mount. The funding agency can also provide a monitoring and coaching function during the project. This requires knowledge about and appreciation for the key elements of successful technology transfer, and it implies that members of the agency must be free to be involved in plant visits, meetings, review sessions and the like.

6. Postscript The research reported in this paper was completed in 198 1. What has happened to TSI and the technology since then? As described in the case study, TSI had built several working prototype reading machines by the end of 1980. Unfortunately, because of large declines in federal social services funding, and internal TSI business problems linked to the economic recession in the U.S., TSI had not, as of August 1982, been able to develop the reading machine as a product line. However, the Speech Systems Division of TSI had successfully completed the development of a high-quality unlimited vocabulary text-to-speech system on a single printed circuit board. This OEM product has been in production since spring of 1982, and by August 1982 TSI had received orders for over 200 boards. The hardware and software development of this product required approximately 10 additional person-years of effort. Almost all of the software for the product was written in the “C” programming language. The

R.S. Goldhor and R. T. Lund / Unroersity

hardware included a signal processing chip with more limited capabilities than TSI’s VTM chip set, but it was still capable of doing all the processing required for the vocal tract model. The board was selling for approximately $3,500. TSI decided to spin off its Speech Systems Division as a separate company, to be called Speech Plus, Inc. This was being done to make it easier to generate the capital TSI believed was required to allow its speech division to grow quickly enough to meet predicted market demands. As of August 1982, TSI was looking for venture capital for the new firm, with intentions of remaining a minority stockholder.

References Text-to-Speech Conversion for Allen, Computer-Aided Instruction. Addendum to National Science Foundation Proposal No. EC40043-000 (September 1974). 121William Henke, Minicomputer BCL programmers’ manual (Speech Communications Laboratory, M.I.T., October 1977). from James Bliss to Richard [31 Personal communication Goldhor, February 198 1. [41 J. Munson et al., Systems Study of an Interactive Computer-Aided Text Reading Service For The Blind Available Through Any Telephone (Stanford Research Institute, March 1970). [51 TSI internal memo, September 15, 1975. [61 Natloncrl Science Foundation Guide to Programs (FY 1978). Institute of Technology Patent Licensing [71 Massachusetts Policy (M.I.T. Patent Office, undated. PI Interview with Diane Thilly, November 20, 1980. [91 Massachusetts Instrtute of Technology Patent Policies and Institute of Technologv Procedures, and Massachusetts Copyright Policy (M.I.T. Patent Office, undated). TSI internal memo, November 6, 1975. Interview with Jonathan Allen, June 2, 1980. TSI internal memo, February 5, 1976. Interview with Herman Harvey, November 6, 1979. Robert Savoie, Experimental Simulation of an Optical Character Recognition/Speech Output Reading Machine and the Blind. Unsolicited Research Proposal Submitted to the National Science Foundation, Research Applied to National Needs (RANN) (March 1976). [I51 Letter from Dr. J. Steven Brugler to Professor Jonathan Allen, June 18. 1976. Task Force, [I61 James Caldwell, Proposal For Text-To-Speech TSI internal memo, April 5, 1977. Interview with James Bliss, May 27, 1980. Interview with James Caldwell, January 22, 198 1. Personal communication from James Caldwell to Richard Goldhor, February 1981. WI Interview with Jonathan Allen, February 4, 1981.

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Pll Interview with Anthony Sword, May 29, 1980. PI Interview with Robert Savoie, February 25, 198 1. ~231 TSI internal memo from Geoffrey Nelson to TSI Executive Committee, April 28, 1978. from James Bliss to Richard ~241 Personal communication Goldhor, January 198 1. from James Caldwell to Richard 1251 Personal communication Goldhor, January 22, 198 1. Spoken WI James Caldwell, Objectives For A Hand-Scanned Word Output Reading System, TSI internal memo. March 25, 1978. ~271 M.I.T. Patent Office internal notes, February 6, 1979. WI Interview with Gabriel Groner, November 5, 1980. ~291 Letter from Richard Goldhor to James Bliss, November 8. 1978. and David Pisoni. Unlimited Text-to[301 Jared Bernstein Speech System: Description and Evaluation of a Microprocessor Based Device, 1980 IIEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Denver (April 1980) pp. 576-579. Software License Agreement. between MIT [311 Text-to-Speech and TSI, signed October 18, 1979. ~321 Klatt Speech Synthesis by Rule Software, between Dennis Klatt and TSI, signed October 18. 1979. [331 TSI News, Newsletter 22, Fall 10980. from M.I.T. Patent Office files, March 1981. [341 Information from Jonathan Allen to Richard [351 Personal communication Goldhor, February 198 1. Capltaltsm, Socicrlism and Democrrrry [361 J. Schumpeter, (Harper & Row, 1942). 1371 J. Obermayer, Case Study Examining the Role of Government R&D Contract Funding in the Early History of High Technology Companies (The Research and Planning Institute Incorporated, July 1980). [381 J.F. Bucy, An Analysis of Export Control of U.S. Technology - a DOD Perspective. A report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Export of U.S. Technology (Office of DDR&E, Washington, DC. Feb. 1976). from S. Brugler to R. Goldhor, [391 Personal communication May 27, 1980. Applications 1401 H. Peake and T. Golden, The Baltimore Project: An Experiment in Technology Transfer. 1979 IEEE Engineering Management Conference (November. 1979). M.A. Sirbu and J.M. Utterback, Mi[411 R.T. Lund, croprocessor Apphcations: Cases and Ohservattons (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1980). “Linking” Organizational & Technology ~421 A. Herzog, Transfer: An Examination of One Natronal System (The Academy of Management Proceedings, 1977) pp. 428-432.

Bibliography F.N. Bar-Zakay, Technology Transfer Model, a Rand Corporation report, (Nov. 1970). W. Lambright and A. Teich, Federal Laboratories and Technology. (University Research Corporation, March 1974). F. Landis (ed.), Proceedings of a Conference on Engineering and Science Research for Industrial Development Held at Eaton,

Maryland on October 3-7. 1977, NSF report no. PRA-77SP- 113 1 (October 1977). Companres, report prepared for the Small Business Administration. Research & Planning Institute, Inc., Cambridge, MA, July 1980.

H.

Peake, Technology Transfer Semantics, Mechmisms. und Models. 1979 IEEE Engineering Management Conference. November 1979.