Findings
from ATP-EAO’s
Post-Project Survey
2
Broad-based
economic benefits isare the ultimate goal under ATP’s
legislated mission. These benefits occur through a number of
avenues including:
- Products
entering the early part of the production chain enable
many downstream customers to benefit from the innovation.
Almost
all products developed with ATP-funded technology (over
96%) are sold to customers that use it in their own production
process, either in-house or integrated into a larger product,
which is then sold to their customers.
- Significant
Customer Base.
ATP
project participants report an average of 107 customers
for products used in-house and an average of 35 customers
for companies that integrate the product produced by
ATP-funded technology into their own product.
- Customers
in Multiple Industries.
Almost
half of the companies report that at least some of their
customers are outside of their own industry.
Spillover benefits accrue to the customers of the products developed
with ATP-funded technology as they use these products to improve
their own production processes. A significant portion of these
customers of ATP-funded technology experience higher productivity
as a result of reduced costs, improved performance, and enhanced
quality:3
- Eight out of ten companies report that use of their product reduces
the costs of their customer’s production;
over half of the companies reporting reduced costs indicated
that the reduction was by a VERY significant amount.
- Seven and a half out of ten report their customers enjoy improved
performance through use of their product.
- Six out of ten report improved product quality.
- Over half report all three attributes: reduced costs,
improved performance and increased quality.
- Over half report that their product enables them to produce
a new product that they could not produce before.
___________________
1 These
data are responses to questions specifically aimed at the most
important market activity that resulted from their ATP project.
Therefore, the numbers presented here understate the overall
impact of the ATP project on the customers of these firms.
2 EAO
collects data from ATP companies participating in an ATP
project two, four and six years after a project's completion.
EAO calls this the Post-Project Survey. Data collected for
this fact sheet came from nine rounds of interviews covering
projects that began sometime between October 1, 1993, and
December 31, 1998. The interviews were conducted between
February 1, 2001, and August 1, 2004. The first seven sets
of interviews were timed to occur approximately two years
after the ATP project ended. The last two sets of interviews
included 168 companies surveyed from the first set of interviews
since four years had elapsed for those projects. In addition,
11 new companies were surveyed who were not sampled in the first
round. This fact sheet comes from the responses of 515 participant
companies working for 261 projects. The 261 projects divided
into 187 single applicant and 74 joint venture projects.
3 This
section refers to commercial products, not processes, developed
with ATP-funded technology. Specifically, how the customers
of these products use them as inputs in order to improve
the quality or reduce the cost of their final product.
Factsheet 1.F1 (September 2004 by John Nail ). |
