
Ask HN: Researchers: What practical research hasn't been commercialized? - hazard
It&#x27;s my understanding that many fields have practical, useful research results that never get brought to market. Most often, it&#x27;s because researchers lack the time and interest to starting a business, or the researcher&#x27;s university owns patents and entrepreneurs don&#x27;t want to deal with the licensing process, or simply that no one outside the field is even aware of the practical applications of the research.<p>So I ask all you HN researchers: What results are you aware of that can solve problems and help people, but haven&#x27;t yet been commercialized?
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robius
There are many, just ask any unhappy scientists.

Funding goes to popularity, not new research. This is even true at DARPA where
they ignore new technology because it doesn't fit some preconceived notion or
don't have a framework to evaluate it.

Case in point for XAI, explainable artificial intelligence. The algorithms we
use today give us black box models we can't interpret directly. So instead of
fixing the algorithms, they focus on modeling the models and "guessing" which
ones come close enough via simpler more intuitive stacks of models. Guesses
upon guesses.

There has been research in new algorithms that generate open models where the
weights make sense and are editable. There is one company working on this, but
it's not nearly enough.

There's another set of research that has managed to convert black box models
into open ones, giving full transparency.

Then there's asynchronous circuits research which do not require a clock.
These can reduce power usage and boost efficiency on low power devices. Not
much going on here.

There's one group building a RISC5 architecture with these, based on 30+ year
old research with the inventor who still has not seen his life's work
commercialized.

Then there's various types of imaging and tracking with signals we use every
day, such as BT, Wi-Fi and Cellular among others, and being able to locate
devices or people. You can find several universities doing this, none have
made it commercially.

~~~
brookhaven_dude
Can you provide more references on XAI and converting current black-box models
into more open ones?

~~~
TheTrotters
The Economist had a relevant article a few months ago:
[https://www.economist.com/science-and-
technology/2018/02/15/...](https://www.economist.com/science-and-
technology/2018/02/15/for-artificial-intelligence-to-thrive-it-must-explain-
itself)

------
wenc
Semi-on topic: people with blue-sky ideas are often asked "if the idea was so
good, why hasn't anyone commercialized/done this before?" which often inhibits
further inquiry.

But the fact is, an idea's current feasibility may be a function of its
present constraints. Opportunities open up when constraints change [1]. This
is why it can be useful to revisit old ideas and test them against the current
environment.

[1] "Objectives and constraints",
[https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/06/26/objectives-and-
con...](https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/06/26/objectives-and-constraints/)

~~~
overcast
If you think you've got a great idea, rest assured a thousand other people on
this planet have the same idea. The difference is when one of them actually
does it. Few do.

~~~
wenc
I think your point about execution is correct -- few people actually develop
their ideas into something tangible.

But I'm not sure that it is an inevitable fact that most people will end up
having the same ideas. Someone once said that in humongous countries like
China and India, it is statistically inevitable they have thought of most of
the things the rest of the world have thought of.

But why hasn't China come up with thoughts that German philosophers have come
up with, or with specific ideas that have come out of the west? I think it's
because there wasn't a focus on the things that mattered to Europeans at the
time. Culture and environment matters, and dictates the ideas we are capable
of having.

Large populations are not made up of uncorrelated, independent individuals.
Most of the those individuals have highly correlated thoughts, mostly driven
by the culture at large.

------
andbberger
This is one of those... those who know don't talk and those who talk don't
know situations...

You're going to have to put your money where your mouth is!

~~~
mygo
how do you figure that? there are many researchers whose innovative and
practical solutions do not get funded. why would people keep quiet about
under-funded research?

~~~
andbberger
Because it's a valuable idea that I know about and you don't? BTW feel free to
send me actual money, I'm sitting on plenty and I can only work on one at a
time.

~~~
mygo
that’s your mentality.

it’s not everybody’s.

I’m not interested in sending you money for your ideas, thanks. There’s all
kinds of people. If there is a big enough problem to be addressed then there
exists not only information hoarders/squatters like yourself, but also others
who would be willing to elaborate to just move something forward and try to
get their problem solved.

~~~
andbberger
If it was academia we were discussing, then yes share all the things. But OP
is asking about things which can be commercialized.

Sadly science funding in the US is an absolute shitshow and science costs
money so...

I think you should consider this from the position of a researcher with no
funding sitting on valuable ideas. Commercializing that idea can fund other
research they want to do. So even from the perspective of wanting science to
be free and the common heritage of mankind, a researcher can do more science
by capitalizing on a valuable idea.

It's kinda shitty, but science doesn't take place in a vacuum, researchers
have to eat.

I get where you're coming at, but I just don't think it's realistic. You can't
just ignore incentives.

~~~
mygo
You think I’m ignoring incentives yet my entire argument was based on
incentives. People are experiencing problems in their daily lives. They know
of under-funded research that can solve their problems. They don’t have to be
the researchers. Besides, university researchers are not in a vacuum. They
will get patents for their innovations, paid for by the uni, even if it’s not
ever commercialized. And universities are notoriously bad at just shelving
innovations instead of commercializing them. Most schools just simply do not
have the right people in-house to do it successfully. There even exists
offices of commercialization in the larger universities whose sole purpose is
to find for-profit buyers / licensors for their under-funded research. And
even they still fail at finding buyers for many practical innovations. The
more people that know about their innovations the more likely it is to get the
right funding and market access behind it and become commercialized. These are
the facts in the real world.

~~~
andbberger
I'm having a hard time following your argument... what are you proposing?

------
reasonattlm
If you run through the ~15 years of my blog, Fight Aging!, you'll find scores
of promising lines of work that never made it much further than the initial
reports. Medical science has a huge chasm of death between research and
commercialization. It is comparatively rare for failure to proceed to be a
matter of technical failure. Other causes are, I think, more common.

Part of this is that researchers don't know how to launch it, and most are not
entrepreneurial. Part of it is that many technology transfer groups are like
dogs in a manger, toads squatting atop things they'll never put any effort
into helping along, and whose job in life is to make it slow, expensive, and
hard to deal with their IP. Part of it is that funds, VCs, and to some degree
entrepreneurs sit around waiting for something to be handed to them, nicely
packaged.

I think most of the fault is with the funds and the incubators. They have the
money to craft a solution, to make a landing pad for scientist outreach, to
give them a beacon to aim at. They can reach back into the research community
to a much greater extend. They can build BDCs that increase the ratio of
projects:entrepreneurs that can be tackled profitably. But very little of this
actually happens.

My company, Repair Biotechnologies, has found two immensely promising
technologies for human rejuvenation that have been in the first case dropped
on the floor at the chasm of death, never carried forward, and in the second
case died because the institutions involved couldn't convince their funding
sources to back the incredible potential of the work. This happens. Many
institutional sources of funding don't want to see biotech barnstorming, don't
want to see imaginative, radical new directions. They shut it down.

All of this combines to form a dysfunctional environment in which knowledgable
entrepreneurs can pick up truly revolutionary projects, but there really needs
to be institutional change that only bigger organizations and wallets can
bring to bear.

~~~
overlords
Is there some comprehensive source of information on these. Downloadable
dataset of research, like the patent database that is downloadable.

------
qznc
Apply static code analysis to apps for guarantees like "This app access your
addressbook but never sends it to the internet".

Some of my ex-collegues were working on this:
[https://pp.ipd.kit.edu/publication.php?id=jodroid2015atps](https://pp.ipd.kit.edu/publication.php?id=jodroid2015atps)

Turn the research prototype into a practical tool. Hope to get acquihired by
Google or Apple for their app store.

~~~
gabcoh
This seems like an incredibly useful and important tool. However, I think
ideally a tool like this should be open source and free.

edit: it seems like this groups work is open sourced actually
[https://pp.ipd.kit.edu/projects/joana/](https://pp.ipd.kit.edu/projects/joana/)

~~~
qznc
Joana is an open source Eclipse plugin for information flow control. Afaik the
most precise one which still scales reasonably well.

The core technology is not the thing to commercialize. The valuable thing is
to be an independent third party which provides the guarantees. It is about
image and prestige.

The hard question imho: Are such guarantees valuable enough? Do end users care
enough that it is worth it?

------
qznc
I heard seasonal thermal energy storage is underrated:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storage)

Solar power is mostly available in summer, but heating is mostly necessary in
the winter. How do you store the energy for half a year? Apparently a big
water tank underground is a great solution. It is also boring, non-sexy, and
cheap. Thus there is little interest to commercialize it.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Doesn't sound cheap for a single family unit, but maybe many of them.

~~~
namibj
Depends on the cost of digging.

------
walrus01
It's theoretically possible to build really small nuclear reactors for
electrical power generation (such as for a pacific island that currently uses
heavy fuel oil and diesel). I recall a pilot project that was trying to get
off the ground to power a fly-in town in Alaska.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant)

Regulatory, nuclear material proliferation and safety concerns have prevented
anyone from doing so up until now.

------
notadoc
Phage therapy is the most glaringly obvious to me, particularly as antibiotic
resistance increases while the pipeline of new drugs is nearly nonexistent.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy)

~~~
ReedJessen
Thoughts on why this hasn't been commercialized?

~~~
jeffreyrogers
Hard to get regulatory approval and concerns that phages can't be patented so
pharmaceutical can't guarantee a monopoly. Plus, the existing way works, so
not much incentive to replace it with something speculative. Sort of like why
you don't rewrite an existing codebase in C in some other language.

~~~
notadoc
> Plus, the existing way works, so not much incentive to replace it with
> something speculative.

Except the existing way is quickly no longer working, hence antibiotic
resistance. Also, it's not speculative, phage therapy works.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
Sure, I'm disputing either of those claims. But if you look at it from the
perspective of a drug company the existing way is fine (for now) and it's
risky to switch.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
Oops should have said "not disputing".

------
colordrops
I'd wager that anything that is not profitable is not commercialized. For
instance, finding some household substance has the same efficacy of a billion
dollar pharmaceutical.

~~~
TomMckenny
The "Rapid Ramen Cooker" took till 2010 to be commercialized: it's a plastic
tray.

~~~
kypro
The commercialisation of water is an even better example. You can sell
anything if you market it right.

------
analogwzrd
I couldn't give you a list of examples off the top of my head, but I do know
that people are aware of this problem and one of the more prominent solutions
is to attach a start-up accelerator to the university.

The example I know of is the Innovation Deport in Birmingham, AL (my hometown)
being attached to the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The university does
a lot of medical research and from what I hear, the Innovation Depot is trying
to establish itself as the go-to place for professors to take their patents
and provide business/engineering/manufacturing expertise.

[https://innovationdepot.org/](https://innovationdepot.org/)

~~~
mbowcutt
Many universities (if not most) already have technology transfer offices for
this purpose. What is the difference between the Innovation Depot and [1] this
department at UAB?

[1]
[https://www.uab.edu/research/innovation/](https://www.uab.edu/research/innovation/)

~~~
analogwzrd
I'm not exactly sure where they draw the lines...but the "Accelerate" picture
on the website for that department at UAB is a picture of the Innovation
Depot.

That department might just be the university side of the accelerator.

~~~
Fomite
After a brief reading, it's important to note that two paths for faculty:

1) Get someone else to commercialize your research (tech transfer often does
this)

and

2) Start a business around your research

Have _very_ different paths and consequences.

------
ArtWomb
Hypersonic and supersonic civilian transport. SpaceX published a first render
of what parabolic arcs through low-earth orbit would look like. With estimated
one-way arrival time under an hour. YC's own Boom Aerospace is set to announce
first flight of its experimental XB-1 aircraft sometime next year. But it is
just the beginning. Latent consumer demand could equal 100M+ passengers per
annum. The technology is here today. It's simply not evenly distributed yet ;)

~~~
maxander
Do you really think there are 100M people on the planet willing and able to
pay for the absurd fuel cost this would require, just to shave off a few hours
heading to a holiday or business meeting? There’s a reason that present day
jets are so slow, and it’s not technological, it’s economical.

~~~
namibj
You are confusing "unique visitors" with "clicks", to borrow from Website-
speak. I hope this makes sense now.

Also, the reason the jets are so slow is that supersonic flight is illegal for
civilan aircraft over much developed land. There are ways to greatly reduce
the noise though, and for subsonic aircraft there are also ways to fly fast
but very silent if optimized for this. We have the tech, the oscillations have
to be eliminated in e.g. rocket engines, and we are talking about conditions
that we can simulate due to the temperature and pressure being in much more
comfortable ranges.

------
Maro
Million dollar question :)

------
tensor
Almost any state-of-the-art computer science paper can be incorporated into a
commercialized product. Entire companies are often built around a single fancy
new index method or the like.

The trick is in the execution and application. What problem are you going to
solve? Are you able to build up the surrounding "boring" bits necessary to
productize something?

------
DoreenMichele
In the US, this is one of the purposes of the National Labs and they probably
all have easily googled programs. For example:

[https://www.ornl.gov/connect-with-ornl/for-
industry/partners...](https://www.ornl.gov/connect-with-ornl/for-
industry/partnerships/)

[http://lanl.gov/business/business-
opportunities/index.php](http://lanl.gov/business/business-
opportunities/index.php)

Edit: list of labs

[https://science.energy.gov/laboratories/](https://science.energy.gov/laboratories/)

[https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/national-
laboratories](https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/national-laboratories)

------
azhenley
Several of my tool designs for developers have not been applied to products
yet (while some have).

See my pub list:
[http://austinhenley.com/publications.html](http://austinhenley.com/publications.html)

Let me know what you would like to fund :)

~~~
arrmn
Can you link some products that have your research as a basis?

------
rapjr9
Universities patent lots of practical research that has yet to be
commercialized. Here are some patents I've helped file that I know are not yet
commercialized:

[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-
adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=%28an%2Fthe-trustees-of-dartmouth-
college%29+AND+in%2Fpeterson&d=PTXT)

------
noelwelsh
Just a note that not all research needs to lead to a product to be useful.
Changing how an existing process is done is sufficient. A library for a
programming language might be another result.

------
ankurdhama
I think one general point that we all need to understand is that even though a
practical research is amazing and have good potential, in the real world, it
will have to work with the existing and very complex ecosystem. This task of
bringing a new tech into an existing ecosystem is really really difficult and
depends on so many factors that are outside of control for the people who
developed the new tech.

------
fifnir
I don't know how far research has been so far, but I can see a few Nobel
prizes of medicine (and lots of money) in the gut microbiome field

------
l5870uoo9y
My impression is that cooperations these days facilitates a lot of practical
research to attain an eventual patent and reap the benefits of the scientists'
achievements.

It isn't research, but I was at a party the other day and this women who works
at a record company specialising in classical music said that an classical
music app with high quality recordings didn't exist.

~~~
thebigspacefuck
TIDAL/Spotify have classical music, though I'm not sure if FLAC/320Kbps is
what she meant by high quality recordings.

~~~
briankelly
I think a lot of it needs to be remastered for digital, she might mean that.

------
alimw
Not all research is designed for commercial exploitation! For example some
ideas that are both practical and useful can only be implemented by regulators
or government agencies. In this arena good research may fail to find adoption
for any of a vast number of stupid reasons.

------
ljw1001
There are many advances in diagnostic medicine that aren't pursued because the
cost of testing many people outweighs (economically) the benefits of treating
the few positive cases who would be found.

Finding a way to change that calculation could open many paths to treatment.

------
Fomite
I know for my own work, which I think has commercial potential, I go back and
forth as to whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze as far as
commercialization is concerned.

------
myf01d
Network on Chip

------
stealthcat
The capitalists lobby pretty badly to suppress incoming disruptive
technologies that could take their market share. Energy, agriculture,
medicine, etc.

