Report of the APS Task Force for Industrial Physicists

Introduction

The world has changed profoundly during the past 20 years¹. The Cold War has morphed into a War on Terror. A set of loosely coupled national economies has evolved into a highly interconnected and tightly coupled global economy based on a worldwide digital information network—the Internet^1,2. The creation of economic value from research knowledge has moved from the province of vertically integrated firms to loose global consortia^2,3. Research projects and their funding have gone global, with contributors from all over the world working together via the Internet^1,2. Trained technical manpower has become globally available and plentiful, as has the capital for commercially oriented R&D projects².

The world has changed profoundly during the past 20 years¹. The Cold War has morphed into a War on Terror. A set of loosely coupled national economies has evolved into a highly interconnected and tightly coupled global economy based on a worldwide digital information network — the Internet^1,2. The creation of economic value from research knowledge has moved from the province of vertically integrated firms to loose global consortia^2,3. Research projects and their funding have gone global, with contributors from all over the world working together via the Internet^1,2. Trained technical manpower has become globally available and plentiful, as has the capital for commercially oriented R&D projects².

These changes have exerted a powerful influence on physics and physicists. An increasing percentage of physics PhDs are employed by industry: Up from 36% in the 1950s to 56% in the 1990s⁴. In the global economy, the value of R&D, including physics R&D, is increasingly measured in terms of the economic value resulting from that R&D^1,2,3,5. Moreover, this value is no longer being created primarily in large firms that sponsor central R&D organizations that perform basic research, like Bell Labs, GE, IBM, Dupont and Xerox in the past. Rather new models of creating value of R&D are being pioneered in which loosely-coupled, globally distributed organizations connected via the Internet constitute the new product development pipelines^2,3. In this new world industrial physicists no longer do basic research in the physical science in analogy with their academic cousins. Rather they perform applied research directly related to product development in a fashion that has historically been more associated with engineering than with science^6,7. Thus, their activities increasingly migrate away from the topics of interest to the American Physical Society (APS) to those sponsored by more applied oriented Physics Societies like OSA and AVS or sponsored by engineering societies (like the IEEE) and materials science oriented societies (like MRS or ACS).

Because of these changes, the role of industrial physicists in the APS has been declining. The percentage of APS members employed by industry has been dropping to its current value of about 20%⁸. Industrial APS members rarely either publish in APS journals or attend its meetings⁹. They receive a negligible share of APS prizes and awards, including Fellowship⁸. Very few are active in APS governance⁸. Approximately 70% belong to some other professional society in addition to APS⁹. Most are connected to APS primarily via their use of Physics Today and APS News⁹. Thus, at a time when the importance of physics to the nation is increasingly felt via its contributions to economic growth and prosperity, the role of the physicists who make these contributions in the APS has declined to the point of being almost invisible in the major APS activities.

Given this increasing gap between the need for a prominent physics profile in the global economy and the declining role of industrial physicists in the APS, the APS Executive Board commissioned a Task Force for Industrial Physicists to assess the competitive situation of APS activities for industrial physicists and to make recommendations of how it can better serve this segment of its membership. The charge to the task force is presented in Appendix A. The membership of the task force consisted of eight industrial physicists from a variety of firms. The roster is given in Appendix B. Several initial members dropped out during the study: A reminder of the low priority given APS activities by industrial physicists who are struggling daily just to perform their jobs in difficult environments. The task force held seven teleconferences commencing on January 26, 2006, and concluding on August 15, 2006. It performed an assessment of a partnership proposal by Fortnight Solutions for a web-based technical solutions service. It conducted an extensive survey of the competitive services and offerings of other scientific and technical societies serving industrial physicists. These results are reported in Appendix C. It prepared a questionnaire of the industrial members of APS and assisted in analyzing the results, which are reported in reference 9. Finally, based on the results of its studies, it proposed and refined recommendations pertaining to each item in the statement of task.

This document is the report of the Task Force for Industrial Physicists. In Section 2 the task force identifies the market segments that together comprise industrial physicists and gives a profile of those industrial physicists who are members of APS. Section 3 of this report addresses the first item in the charge to the task force: Improved Web services. Section 4 addresses the second item: Comparison of APS services to industrial physicists with those of other technical societies serving this audience. Because other societies serve important needs of this audience that APS does not, collaboration of APS with other societies to create enhanced relevant offerings and services is an essential step for APS to enhance its attractiveness to industrial physicists. Section 5 is devoted to the articulation of three specific, actionable recommendations to achieve this objective, in response to the third and final item in the statement of task.

References

1. Friedman, T. L. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Farrar, Strauss and Girous, New York, 2005).
2. Chesbrough, H. Open Innovation: The New imperative for Creating and Profiting From Technology (Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2003).
3. Duke, C. B. Creating Economic Value from Research Knowledge. The Industrial Physicist 10, 18–20 (June/July 2004).
4. Neuschatz , M and McFarling, M. NSF Survey of Doctoral Physicists (NSF, Washington DC, 2001).
5. Teresko, J. Recapturing R&D Leadership, Industry Week (Aug. 2006), pp. 28-36.
6. Haas, K. Educating Physicists for Industry: The Rest of the Story. Physics Today 55 (issue 12, 2002).
7. Duke, C. B. The Future of Research in Industry: Implications for Physics and Physicists (Pake Prize Lecture, APS March Meeting, Baltimore MD, 2006)
8. Franz, J. Private communication
9. Chu, R. Y. and Guo, S. 2006 APS Industrial Membership Survey: Preliminary Report (APS, College Park MD, 2006).