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The death of corporate research labs

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Re: The death of corporate research labs

#121

Post by neutronicus »

TheCabin wrote: post #78
_8j50 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not being too large that forced a split up but their anti-competitive practices and positions. The regional bells still were big enough to run their own research labs. Imagine if Alphabet was broken up, Google search can still afford to run a research lab, as can youtube. The problem I think is how easy it is for large companies to acquire smaller companies. It's how they expand or enter a market, they refuse to…

> My answer: you will suffer from brain drain.and reputation loss,when you buy a smaller company,consumers assume that brand is now dead. Not so sure about that. Maybe if you read HN a lot, but I think most users won't even notice.

"Facebook bought WhatsApp - guess we're moving the family group chat to Signal"

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#122

Post by JunkDNA »

rmrfstar wrote: post #52
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…

Spending more on marketing than R&D has been a favorite thing to zero in on but it's not really a useful metric. See here: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/05/23/an...

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#123

Post by sumedh »

_8j50 wrote: post #46
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…

It's not being too large that forced a split up but their anti-competitive practices and positions. The regional bells still were big enough to run their own research labs. Imagine if Alphabet was broken up, Google search can still afford to run a research lab, as can youtube. The problem I think is how easy it is for large companies to acquire smaller companies. It's how they expand or enter a market, they refuse to…

> Imagine if Alphabet was broken up, Google search can still afford to run a research lab, as can youtube.

Is Youtube even profitable?

Doesn't Google make 90%+ revenue from ads?

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#124

Post by AmericanChopper »

NalNezumi wrote: post #99
AmericanChopper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And I guess this is the reason WeWork and their kind is notoriously hated by many people; It sell itself as a "tech startup" while it is not. "tech startups" seems to be synonymous with what the author call the "successors of corporate labs", and that seems to be why VC:s seems to be OK with pouring moneys for a semi-long term payback. People/Companies that play this expectation (such as WeWork and Theranos) get the…

I think you’re confusing innovation with technological innovation. There’s plenty of ways to innovate without advancing technology. There’s also plenty of fields of research unrelated to technology.

Even if you were only concerned with technological innovation, referencing well funded non-technical companies doesn’t negate the existence of any of the well funded technology-focused companies.

Also, Theranos is a perfect example of private equity funding technological research. The fact that it was a scam doesn’t take away from the interest it’s investors had in new technology.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#125

Post by scarface74 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #77
txcwpalpha wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for the context, but I suppose I just couldn't pass up on the poetic phrasing of "selling lipstick" a la Steve Jobs' "selling sugar water" phrase. Point still stands though. Even most of my PhD friends often lack fundamental understanding of how biology works, and I find it hard to believe an MBA can ever catch up no matter how much training they get. I'd argue that in general it also shows - biotechs run by s…

What good is technology if you can’t bring it to market? The CEO that hires smart and listens to their VPs don’t need to know the technology. Often the “smart people” are the worse CEOs. I would be willing to go as far as saying that Cook may be a better CEO at this point in Apple’s life than Jobs would have been.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#126

Post by fuck_google »

netcan wrote: post #95
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…

Very good points. I think we (I, maybe) default to the mistake of thinking in terms of "one big systemic explanation." Ultimately, something like investment in or success at innovation doesn't follow strict rules. The factors that go into it tend to be local. Any practicable "Theory of Innovation" is likely to be true locally, at best. A few years back Neil Degrasse Tyson, advocating for a re-funding of the NASA spac…

Is SpaceX really pioneering space exploration now or just reducing space transportation costs?

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#127

Post by billme »

wegs wrote: post #119
billme wrote: post #110

R&D is not dead. R&D has been rising globally for over 70 years with no major declines. Globally, $1.7 trillion USD a year is currently spent on RD; roughly 2% of the global GDP. There is more research going on right now than at any point in history at any scale. R&D, similar to startups, is full of broken dreams, surviver bias, etc. — those complaining their source of funding dried up, they never got lucky, etc. The…

> There is no magic recipe for success in R&D — and anyone that tells you they are able to outperform the market at scale as it relates to R&D outcomes is lying. This is complete nonsense. This logic applies well to stock and bond valuation, where you have armies of traders optimizing from public information. It's a pretty frictionless market It's like telling a parent their kids can't outperform the market at scale…

What is the recipe? — (You have written a lot of words, no recipe.)

Honestly, love research, would be happy to be wrong, but all I hear you saying is someone did it so it must be possible— that’s called survivor bias, it’s not a recipe and it would not double the global output of R&D for the next 10-1000 years.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#128

Post by enitihas »

_8j50 wrote: post #46
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…

It's not being too large that forced a split up but their anti-competitive practices and positions. The regional bells still were big enough to run their own research labs. Imagine if Alphabet was broken up, Google search can still afford to run a research lab, as can youtube. The problem I think is how easy it is for large companies to acquire smaller companies. It's how they expand or enter a market, they refuse to…

> Imagine if Alphabet was broken up, Google search can still afford to run a research lab, as can youtube.

It is far more likely that YouTube will go bankrupt, since running a free video service where videos are almost infinite and cache hits much lower is very costly. Couple that with all the other advantages of being with Google like access to talent and infra, I don't see YouTube surviving with Google. It's possible that the tab will be picked up by Facebook video, and that is an even worse platform and more closed.

I don't see a cheap way of solving the YouTube problem. (Yes P2P exists but has too many problems like battery consumption on phones and NAT).

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#129

Post by _8j50 »

sumedh wrote: post #123
_8j50 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not being too large that forced a split up but their anti-competitive practices and positions. The regional bells still were big enough to run their own research labs. Imagine if Alphabet was broken up, Google search can still afford to run a research lab, as can youtube. The problem I think is how easy it is for large companies to acquire smaller companies. It's how they expand or enter a market, they refuse to…

> Imagine if Alphabet was broken up, Google search can still afford to run a research lab, as can youtube. Is Youtube even profitable? Doesn't Google make 90%+ revenue from ads?

Under Google not so much. But you just need liquidity for R&D, the point being you will develop new concepts that will improve profits. Netflix,hulu,amazon prime all came after youtube,perhaps good R&D without Alaphapet's shackles would have let them compete in those markets and more (video conferencing for example like zoom).

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#130

Post by scarface74 »

neutronicus wrote: post #121
TheCabin wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My answer: you will suffer from brain drain.and reputation loss,when you buy a smaller company,consumers assume that brand is now dead. Not so sure about that. Maybe if you read HN a lot, but I think most users won't even notice.

"Facebook bought WhatsApp - guess we're moving the family group chat to Signal"

if that anecdote was applicable to the broader market, wouldn’t we have seen WhatsApp’s numbers decline and Signal’s numbers rise after the acquisition?
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