
Commercial blue-sky research lives on at IBM’s Watson center - iProject
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/commercial-blue-sky-research-lives-on-at-ibms-watson-center/
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breckinloggins
It is more than just declining government budgets which have caused the
decline. In my opinion, the biggest impediment to corporate R&D is the modern
emphasis on quarterly earnings and meeting third-party analysts' estimations
thereof.

(Warning: idle speculation and arm-chair philosophy ahead)

When executive compensation is tied primarily to short term results, it seems
inevitable that "most" companies will end up being run by those with the most
talent and agressive behavior in this area. Those people are usually bean
counters. Every company needs a bean counter, but only in the last (say) 25
years has it been the norm for every company to be LEAD by one.

It is that last point where I think the problem manifests the most. There is,
as everyone at HN knows, a difference between management and leadership.
Leadership requires vision, and no matter how visionary or innovative you are,
if your ultimate goal is having a good day at this quarter's earnings call,
it's hard to see how you could ever justify investment in something more than
a few quarters off.

I'm greatly simplifying, of course. I don't think this happens the way the
naive view of this problem proposes: that productive, storied R&D departments
are summarily executed at the hands of a new CEO hellbent on meeting his
numbers (well, I'm sure that DOES happen sometimes). Rather, I think what has
probably happened to most corporate research is this:

\- The company is doing well, they're meeting their numbers every quarter and
everything is peachy. Much lip-service is paid to the R&D team "without whom
none of our success would be possible".

\- Something happens. Usually it's a bad economy or a disastrous product
launch. Maybe it's a huge corporate scandal. Whatever it is, it's worse than
just a few quarters of missed estimates. The stockholders are screaming; the
analysts and their puppy dog journalists are holding pitchforks. The CEO
promises that something will be done. Decisive action will be taken to bring
this mess under control.

\- At first, the R&D departments are spared, because no one wants to "destroy
the golden egg" (or insert some predictable seed-and-flower metaphor). But the
first round of layoffs in middle management, manufacturing, and engineering
aren't enough. The stock price is still suffering. Clearly more drastic action
is necessary.

\- But wait a minute, we hear in the boardroom, what about this thing they're
doing in R&D that's costing $30 million a year and probably won't produce
anything marketable for 20 years, if at all? I mean, R&D is vital, but surely
that stuff is better left to universities and foundations, right? And just
like that, the farthest-looking research project is cut.

\- It's easy to see how things can proceed in this manner, with every downturn
or crisis prompting a cut in the next most distant research project, until
suddenly the R&D department is just the "Two to Five Year D" department. At
that point, they get renamed to "Product Centers", and are truly and
officially subordinated to the management and politics of the quarterly
earnings cycle.

I spend so much time laying this out because, just as these forward-looking
places didn't disappear overnight by some nefarious CEO twisting his or her
mustache, so can't they be made to magically reappear at existing corporations
through some courageous magnanimous gesture of a new superhero CEO.

If you're the new CEO of Yahoo! (a pretty young company when talking about
stuff like this), it's probably possible. But "Verizon Labs"? "P&G Long Term
Research"? I don't think so. In fact, I predict that even the storied
Microsoft Research division will encounter this fate if the company's
financial prospects continue to look south.

So what will resurrect the tradition of corporate R&D? I think several things:

1\. Just as there is a trend toward online distributed learning, so I think
will there emerge a trend toward online distributed research. The Open Source
movement is, in a way, the archetype for this (although it is closer to
distributed engineering). With new peer-to-peer open publishing and review
systems (of which arXiv is a start), a lessened immediate emphasis on PhD
credentials, a desire to mix and match areas of interest out of fun and
curiosity, the continually shrinking barrier to entry (with everything from 3D
printing to cheaper genomics), and the always-important promise of possible
fortunes through startup spinoffs or "acqui-hires", it will become more and
more common for fundamental research to happen outside the traditional places
where it was done before.

2\. The larger, more expensive research will still be done at universities and
companies, but the companies will be more of the Elon Musk variety. In fact, I
very much hope that he succeeds with Tesla and SolarCity as well as SpaceX,
not only because I believe in those underlying visions, but because I think
Wall Street and the rest of the world need to see "altrusitic visionary
capitalists". Skepticism and cynicism of capitalism in-the-large is at an all-
time high, and it will take some larger-than-life personalities with
spectacular successes to get those less courageous people and organizations to
follow suit. The ultimate end goal of this should be, among other things, "the
death of the quarterly analyst" and, hopefully, a deepening of trust in the
mechanisms of well-regulated capitalism supported (especially in the technical
realms) by open and public-funded foundational research at universities and
other institutions.

3\. Long term, I really believe in the elimination of most physical scarcity.
If you can 3D-print a Ferrari, you might not care as much about stepping on so
many toes to get one. This is, I admit, a hopelessly naive and optimistic look
at the future, and to some extent human beings will always compete with one
another (it is, in my view, one of the things that make life worth living).
But in a world of post-physical scarcity, things like fundamental research and
truly innovative product and service development may become THE things to brag
about "at the club".

One can hope.

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anusinha
The IBM Research Website [1] shows very diverse work in all areas of
chemistry, physics, biology, materials science, electrical and systems
engineering, theoretical computer science, and mathematics. IBM is deeply
involved with cutting edge research across the board in a way that very few
other corporations are. I think Intel Labs (according to an Intel employee I
spoke to once) looks at about a 10-15 year timeframe, but their purview is
more localized than IBMs). Watson Research is an amazing place to be doing
science.

[1]: <http://www.research.ibm.com/>

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tocomment
When are we getting Watson as a replacement for Google by the way.

