Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 11

An alternative mechanism would continue to rely on internal, professional patent
examiners at the USPTO but flexibly form examiner teams for evaluation. In such a model,
narrow patent applications might still be assigned to single examiners, while broader patent
applications receive scrutiny from examiners in multiple art units. Such a system requires
additional coordination, which may be costly. At the same time, by deploying human capital
resources so that examiners emphasize only those areas of an application that match their own
expertise, this evaluation format may involve less an increase in total examiner time per patent
and more a reallocation of time across examiners, leading to potentially mild cost effects but
large gains in evaluative accuracy.

D. The National Institutes of Health

The NIH is already team-oriented in evaluations. The standard grant evaluation model
employs panels of experts who meet to discuss promising applications collectively. The panel
evaluation is traditionally performed within narrowly defined study sections, which aggregate
experts within particular knowledge boundaries.²² This system is presumably effective at
evaluating proposals that fall within the panel’s expertise. By contrast, it is inherently difficult
for any standing panel to effectively evaluate cross-field work, an issue of increasing concern to
the NIH. The NIH is now actively working to promote cross-field research, seen as necessary to
tackle certain major health challenges and to require a cultural shift within the institute. ²³ In
addition, the NIH’s “Transformative R01 Program” is experimenting in part with a new panel
review format that draws on experts in very different fields. Such an evaluative mechanism may
be increasingly important as knowledge continues to advance and field expertise narrows. This
program is thus consistent with the evolution of science detailed in this paper, which provides a
framework for understanding why narrowness has increased, why “multi” or “inter-disciplinary”
research may be increasingly important, and how evaluative formats can change in pursuit of
funding high impact science.

²² Currently, there are 178 distinct, regular standing study sections (see http://www.csr.nih.gov/Roster_proto/
sectionI.asp).

²³ See, especially, the “Research Teams of the Future” initiative within the NIH’s Roadmap for Medical Research
(http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/researchteams/).

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