New Mexico’s two national laboratories are lauded as "national treasures" in an article in Business Week this month.

Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory are the focus of a piece that has private industry executives praising the labs as essential partners in coming up with new product technology, including "green" technology.

Proctor and Gamble president Thomas J. Lange, for example, tells Business Week the company is trying to "go green" but "natural materials may not be as pure, as strong, or as stable over time" as petro-plastics, and the company needs Sandia’s supercomputers and expertise to create eco-friendly materials.

"These are the only places I can go in the world that have such a range of world-class physicists, chemists, biologists, production engineers, and computational scientists," Lange told Business Week. "These labs are national treasures."

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. has a similar collaboration with Sandia in coming up with better tire tread, the article says.

Business Week says Los Alamos has helped spawn 54 private spin-offs since 1997 and that the "industrial park on 240 acres abutting Sandia’s sprawling Albuquerque compound boasts 27 startups that employ 2,184 people and have attracted $234 million in investment capital."

 

"Now, as the idea of ‘innovation economics’ gains currency in Washington, executives are once again turning to the national labs, especially those such as Sandia, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and others that belong to the Energy Dept. These centers are still committed to national security. But at a time when U.S. industries are under pressure to address America’s energy crisis while facing ever-tougher competition abroad, the labs understand they have an important role to play."

But there are roadblocks to such partnerships, as the article points out.

 

"Despite the obvious benefits that have flowed to Goodyear and P&G, however, only a handful of corporations have forged this sort of long-term collaboration. Companies complain that it takes too long—up to a year—to negotiate a joint R&D project or license technology from a federal lab. Officials at the labs have their own complaints: They say U.S. companies mainly want off-the-shelf technology they can use immediately, as opposed to investing in research that won’t pay off for three to five years."

The article says another stumbling block is the fact that scientists at federal labs are barred from serving as paid consultants and can’t hold equity stakes in companies that license their research. However, it says the labs are addressing this with entrepreneurial leaves and courses on entrepreneurship.