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The death of corporate research labs

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Re: The death of corporate research labs

#141

Post by ikeyany »

jedberg wrote: post #10
glangdale wrote: post #3

I have often found it baffling that tech giants, with near unlimited resources to fund all sorts of things, don't establish these kinds of labs. I'm aware that there are many things called something like "{Google, Facebook, Twitter, ...} Labs" but from what I understand they are significantly different from the corporate research labs of old.

Aren't Google's "other bets" basically just huge research labs?

Exactly. Calico Labs for example is under Alphabet and devoted to researching aging and longevity:

https://www.calicolabs.com/

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#142

Post by mkl »

Why aren't there blue sky research labs funded by curious billionaires? Xerox PARC's key computing inventions cost a total of US$48 million in today's dollars [1]. There may not be so much big cheap low-hanging fruit now, but there is still plenty within reach. Bezos could be doing this instead of or as well as Blue Origin (which he's been funding at US$1 billion/year [2]).

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2012/08/01/the-lesson...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#143

Post by kitd »

ramraj07 wrote: post #84
kitd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs are usually business people. The "product" they work with is the development and sustenance of the business and shareholder value. They sometimes have domain knowledge but if they don't, the board should have access to a sufficient supply to make sound technical decisions.

Their goal is development and sustenance of the business, thats not their product unless they're Berkshire. They can only make products that can be sold profitably if they make products that work. All the marketing in the world can only do so much (not saying it cannot salvage at all) if a drug just doesn't work. And a CEO should know as best as any human can know whether a drug they will be spending billions on has…

Their goal is development and sustenance of the business, thats not their product

That's why I put "product" in quotes. The CEO's concern is the business. Domain experts handle the tactical decisions.

a CEO cannot just outsource it to some other experts

I'm sorry but that is precisely what happens in big business all over the world. Call it "expert guidance" if you want, but if you really think the CEO is solely responsible for making domain decisions, as well as all the business development ones, you're misinformed. They will have views, but those will almost certainly come from the business end, not the domain end.

Apart from anything else, domain knowledge can change so fast, a CEO can't be expected to stay at the bleeding edge and manage the business.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#144

Post by varjag »

TomMarius wrote: post #83
Barrin92 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people argue that but it's not anywhere in the numbers (and even more importantly, in lived experience). The argument can be made that this innovation just lags the invention of the internet but that's kind of unfalsifiable and looks increasingly like rationalisation. One key difference is that inventions like the microprocessor or the steam engine are deeply fundamental. They're at the 'backend' of the chain. Intern…

2070 very probably will be entirely different than 1970, though. What changed is that computers have allowed us to go to space (at scale) and other incredible feats.

I remember thinking in 1980s that year 2000 would be something unrecognizable. You can feel this optimism in movies like Back to the Future, Blade Runner, Terminator or Escape From New York. They would set entirely different worlds in relatively near future, largely due to expectations from then recent technological change rates.

In reality (aside from tremendous change of political landscape) the 80s and the 00s weren't particularly different to live in.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#145

Post by ajmarsh »

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…

The book "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation" is a great story about the history of Bell Labs and how the anti-trust suit effectively killed it.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#146

Post by take_a_breath »

mkl wrote: post #142

Why aren't there blue sky research labs funded by curious billionaires? Xerox PARC's key computing inventions cost a total of US$48 million in today's dollars [1]. There may not be so much big cheap low-hanging fruit now, but there is still plenty within reach. Bezos could be doing this instead of or as well as Blue Origin (which he's been funding at US$1 billion/year [2]). [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/…

Think of what the Vision Fund could have achieved with this mindset.

I’d love for a billionaire to offer 18-25 year-olds, $25k for a summer to explore new projects.

You could fund 1000 kids with promising projects for $25 million.

If the next great innovation will start as a toy, we need to encourage people to make more toys.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#147

Post by AmericanChopper »

varjag wrote: post #140
AmericanChopper wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're not describing the pace of innovation at all. You're just describing your own judgements about the value of modern innovations. What would COVID-19 look like in 1970? I bet there wouldn't be many people working from home...

COVID-1970 would be a lot slower in the spread due to much less globalized world. The West probably would still not have experienced it, neither the Soviet Bloc due to then fresh Sino-Soviet split and heavily militarized border.

I think the Spanish flu might not agree with that assessment. Both plagues also did a pretty good job of spreading to pretty much all territories that had any form of contact at the time.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#148

Post by lettergram »

What would you call OpenAI (I know it’s not exactly corporate but..), Google Brain, any of the labs competing for quantum computing research, SRI International, etc etc

I work in an “Applied Research” group now. while not a classic corporate research lab, we do get plenty of freedom to experiment with new methods.

Perhaps there are less fundamental improvements because we don’t have a fundamental new medium? So currently most advances are interactive or building off fundamental advances.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#149

Post by t_serpico »

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…

You don't need to have a deep understanding of biology to have a decent grasp of drug development. You're operating at a higher level of abstraction. You could argue such a CEO wouldn't be able to independently gauge the value of a new innovative medicine or approach, but that's where the CSO and others come into play.

Re: The death of corporate research labs

#150

Post by cannabis_sam »

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?

Youtube’s main value is it’s market dominance. That’s why it’s so terrible to use, there’s no competitive incentive to actually improve the user aspects of the service (the advertisers are a COMPLETELY different ballgame tho), they already own the video space and have google/alphabet’s financial muscle to keep competitors away.
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