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The death of corporate research labs

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Re: The death of corporate research labs

#51

Post by roenxi »

I've only got one speed; sorry. Compare this to interest rate policy.

This article mentions a lot of research labs shutting down in the 90s. The 90s was also when the current 30 year period of Any company that invested heavily in the future would have been a loser vs. people who worked on credit. It isn't surprising that none of the big corporations are investing in research. The investment framework levers have been set to 'short term' for a very long time now - it makes more sense to buy up innovative compeititors. It isn't surprising that long term investment in research vanished from the corporate world.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#52

Post by rmrfstar »

ramraj07 wrote: post #15

I am curious what the author thinks about the same problem in pharma/biotech. On the one hand, they are kind of _forced_ to do research in one form or another to power the pipelines, so clearly corporate research is still alive there. However, given the pathetic track record the industry seems to hace, and arguably complete lack of any real innovation (almost all of the drugs in most pipelines are just antibodies or…

> it's revealing when the CEO of the org is not a technical person

Merck's CEO is a lawyer.

> they are kind of _forced_ to do research in one form or another

Modern pharma companies spend more on legal and marketing than they do on R&D [1]. Valeant and Michael Pearson are emblematic of that horrifying trend.

MBA types and McKinsey alums have very different priorities than most hackers/researchers/builders, and it is their priorities that are driving investment decisions these days. That really needs to change.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-28212223

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#53

Post by joshuamorton »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #41
sunstone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital ad tech may be mature but search is not. If it was then the experience of using any search engine would be very much the same but in my experience that is not close to being true yet.

But isn't the experience pretty much the identical? Google, Bing and DDG look essentially the same; the two main differences are the colour of the lipstick, and the search index. The main experience - type in words, get suggestions while typing, confirm and have it show relevant webpages + various info/image/videoboxes - it's universal now.

Right but the visual experience isn't as much a differentiator as the "does this answer my question" experience, which relies on fairly sota methods in NLP, clustering, etc.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#54

Post by freyr »

Bell Labs and Xerox PARC are the poster children for successful corporate R&D labs, but I wonder if, to some extent, they were in the right place at the right time? The advent of modern computing and digital telephony provided rich soil for impactful research.

I worked for a large R&D lab a while back after completing my PhD, but the organization turned out to be completely directionless. Funding went to snake-oil salesmen who charmed executives with flashy proposals that they could never deliver on. I don't think there were any major successes during the time I was there, or since.

They also paid their Bay Area researchers about half the salary of FAANG senior engineers, so they really couldn't retain top talent. This is the downside of being a corporate R&D lab that's not funded by a near-monopoly.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#56

Post by [deleted] »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #32
ramraj07 wrote: post #15

I am curious what the author thinks about the same problem in pharma/biotech. On the one hand, they are kind of _forced_ to do research in one form or another to power the pipelines, so clearly corporate research is still alive there. However, given the pathetic track record the industry seems to hace, and arguably complete lack of any real innovation (almost all of the drugs in most pipelines are just antibodies or…

I think you’re really not giving L’Oreal the credit it deserves. It’s much more than just a lipstick vendor. Sanofi, Europe’s largest pharma company, has its roots in L’Oreal (L’Oreal previously was the parent company of Synthelabo, which used to be the #3 pharma company in Europe until it merged with Sanofi). L’Oreal also does research in things like methods to regrow human skin/hair, which aren’t on the same level…

[deleted]

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#57

Post by throwaway2048 »

victoro wrote: post #38
legitster wrote: post #34

Holdup. Lack of anti-trust enforcement is blamed (among other things) for the end of corporate R&D, but Monopoly breakup is exactly what killed Bell labs! 9 smaller companies weren't going to fund their own lab, and the only reason the lab existed was to find new markets to explore. In fact, nearly all of the examples of successful R&D labs came from corporations that so dominated their industry they put money into f…

Anti-trust enforcement can take many forms -- breaking companies up is just one of the most extreme and obvious ones -- but often just the threat of action was enough since for a while the US government backed it up. A big reason Bell Labs was created and perpetuated was because AT&T feared being broken up. Bell Labs was effectively a PR vehicle they used to show the US government that they were giving back to the co…

This isn't quite accurate, they were mandated by law to fund bell labs, and bared from profiting from its inventions outside of the telephony domain.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#58

Post by jrumbut »

freyr wrote: post #54

Bell Labs and Xerox PARC are the poster children for successful corporate R&D labs, but I wonder if, to some extent, they were in the right place at the right time? The advent of modern computing and digital telephony provided rich soil for impactful research. I worked for a large R&D lab a while back after completing my PhD, but the organization turned out to be completely directionless. Funding went to snake-oil sa…

I think the nature of research is to create the chance to be at the right place at the right time. Bell Labs and PARC in particular, many of their inventions do not seem to be inevitable extensions of what came before.

Of course, it's also possible to run a research lab poorly and do nothing of value, naturally I don't know anything about your experience.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#59

Post by warent »

freyr wrote: post #54

Bell Labs and Xerox PARC are the poster children for successful corporate R&D labs, but I wonder if, to some extent, they were in the right place at the right time? The advent of modern computing and digital telephony provided rich soil for impactful research. I worked for a large R&D lab a while back after completing my PhD, but the organization turned out to be completely directionless. Funding went to snake-oil sa…

> Bell Labs and Xerox PARC are the poster children for successful corporate R&D labs, but I wonder if, to some extent, they were in the right place at the right time? The dawn of modern computing and digital telephony provided rich soil for impactful research.

I think this is part of it. But als,o there were just so few companies who were doing serious R&D for technology. Breakthroughs were new and unique. These days there are so many different companies constantly innovating that breakthroughs are the expectation/norm.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#60

Post by Barrin92 »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #40
legitster wrote: post #34

Holdup. Lack of anti-trust enforcement is blamed (among other things) for the end of corporate R&D, but Monopoly breakup is exactly what killed Bell labs! 9 smaller companies weren't going to fund their own lab, and the only reason the lab existed was to find new markets to explore. In fact, nearly all of the examples of successful R&D labs came from corporations that so dominated their industry they put money into f…

Just about everything in the article doesn’t pass a sniff test to me. Aside from the issue you mentioned, the article seems to be making the claim that we have less innovation today. Which just seems like a ridiculous claim to me. It also mentions “pervasive short-termism” as an obstacle. It might be in large public companies, but it’s certainly not in the private equity markets. Innovative companies have access to h…

> the article seems to be making the claim that we have less innovation today. Which just seems like a ridiculous claim to me.

looking at econonmic growth it's extremely hard to deny. The years ca. 1945-1975 constitute an exceptional period in innovation far surpassing anything today, both qualitatively as well as quantitavely. (new marginal innovations in tech or pharmaceuticals today tend to be about 10-50x more expensive than just a few decades ago).

Relevant reading: The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War Robert J Gordon

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