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The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

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Re: The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

#31

Post by JoeAltmaier »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #30
amgreg wrote: post #22

Bob Metcalfe, self professed “conservative hippie,” inventor of the Ethernet, founder of 3Com, of Xerox Parc fame, has this to offer: > One of the few things that government should do is finance research, because — I have learned from many years — the only companies that can afford to do research are monopolies. Real companies cannot afford to do research other than monopolies. And there are some famous ones. The tel…

Metcalfe offers a very interesting conservative perspective. The article IMHO has a more convincing conservative counterpoint: Labs, compared to university researchers, also maintain a constant link with delivering value and, ultimately, profitability. University incentive, prestige, and funding regimes suffer from the standard problems around non-profits: if you’re not trying to make profits, what are you trying to…

The idea that a lab can know just where to put their efforts to be "socially useful" is questionable at best.

Re: The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

#32

Post by realityking »

criddell wrote: post #24
amgreg wrote: post #22

Bob Metcalfe, self professed “conservative hippie,” inventor of the Ethernet, founder of 3Com, of Xerox Parc fame, has this to offer: > One of the few things that government should do is finance research, because — I have learned from many years — the only companies that can afford to do research are monopolies. Real companies cannot afford to do research other than monopolies. And there are some famous ones. The tel…

I just finished reading Mitchell Waldrop's book The Dream Machines which is largely about J.C.R. Licklider and it has a lot of stories about the things Metcalfe is talking about during the 60's and 70's and into the 80's. It's a long, detailed book and I recommend it. After finishing the book it made me feel like progress has slowed tremendously. Look at the changes from 1960 to 1970 or from 1970 to 1980 and compare…

I think the most recent big shift, on a society level, was taking that networked world from our offices and homes to mobile devices. It‘s not exactly between 2010 and 2020 but definitely between 2000 and 2020.

Re: The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

#33

Post by kilroy123 »

amgreg wrote: post #22

Bob Metcalfe, self professed “conservative hippie,” inventor of the Ethernet, founder of 3Com, of Xerox Parc fame, has this to offer: > One of the few things that government should do is finance research, because — I have learned from many years — the only companies that can afford to do research are monopolies. Real companies cannot afford to do research other than monopolies. And there are some famous ones. The tel…

I could not agree more with this. I'm very concerned because China has been ramping up their R&D spending while the US has been decreasing, at a time we need to be increasing.

Re: The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

#34

Post by whateveracct »

rowanG077 wrote: post #26
amgreg wrote: post #22

Bob Metcalfe, self professed “conservative hippie,” inventor of the Ethernet, founder of 3Com, of Xerox Parc fame, has this to offer: > One of the few things that government should do is finance research, because — I have learned from many years — the only companies that can afford to do research are monopolies. Real companies cannot afford to do research other than monopolies. And there are some famous ones. The tel…

It sounds almost comical. "Other than the transistor". The transistor is one of the most important inventions humanity ever made.

tbh the fallacy is thinking that invention is unique to the inventor

because the transistor is so fundamental, we probably could've worked towards it in hundreds of different ways than Bell Labs

but that's a big thing in tech circles - thinking a person or entity doing some technical feat is somehow a sign that they are otherworldly

Re: The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

#35

Post by wiz21c »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #30
amgreg wrote: post #22

Bob Metcalfe, self professed “conservative hippie,” inventor of the Ethernet, founder of 3Com, of Xerox Parc fame, has this to offer: > One of the few things that government should do is finance research, because — I have learned from many years — the only companies that can afford to do research are monopolies. Real companies cannot afford to do research other than monopolies. And there are some famous ones. The tel…

Metcalfe offers a very interesting conservative perspective. The article IMHO has a more convincing conservative counterpoint: Labs, compared to university researchers, also maintain a constant link with delivering value and, ultimately, profitability. University incentive, prestige, and funding regimes suffer from the standard problems around non-profits: if you’re not trying to make profits, what are you trying to…

> if you’re not trying to make profits, what are you trying to do ?

Like if working with a profit incentive is doing social good.

Re: The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

#36

Post by micheljansen »

I worked at a large industrial R&D lab around 2010 and it was awesome. It was not pure R&D, because the lab was funded by various business lines as “clients”, which sometimes came with strings attached, but as a model it worked pretty well.

By my estimation about half of the work was real fundamental research with no obvious immediate market or clearly guaranteed business value. There was some pressure to “sell” this work internally after the fact, but that usually ended up making it better.

The other half of the work was more directly commissioned by various business lines. They were responsible for product development, but would enlist us to look into 3rd wave innovation and technology (which we would be experts in because we spent the other half of our time on it).

The mixed model kept the lab grounded in reality, but also created enough freedom to do real R&D.

Re: The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

#37

Post by rowanG077 »

whateveracct wrote: post #34
rowanG077 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds almost comical. "Other than the transistor". The transistor is one of the most important inventions humanity ever made.

tbh the fallacy is thinking that invention is unique to the inventor because the transistor is so fundamental, we probably could've worked towards it in hundreds of different ways than Bell Labs but that's a big thing in tech circles - thinking a person or entity doing some technical feat is somehow a sign that they are otherworldly

Probably yes. But let's say the transistor would have been invented 20 years later by a university. The world would look completely different today. Simply saying we could have invented it some other way disregards the continous impact a result in research makes.

Re: The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

#38

Post by akiselev »

criddell wrote: post #24
amgreg wrote: post #22

Bob Metcalfe, self professed “conservative hippie,” inventor of the Ethernet, founder of 3Com, of Xerox Parc fame, has this to offer: > One of the few things that government should do is finance research, because — I have learned from many years — the only companies that can afford to do research are monopolies. Real companies cannot afford to do research other than monopolies. And there are some famous ones. The tel…

I just finished reading Mitchell Waldrop's book The Dream Machines which is largely about J.C.R. Licklider and it has a lot of stories about the things Metcalfe is talking about during the 60's and 70's and into the 80's. It's a long, detailed book and I recommend it. After finishing the book it made me feel like progress has slowed tremendously. Look at the changes from 1960 to 1970 or from 1970 to 1980 and compare…

I wasn't around those earlier decades so I don't have that perspective, but I do remember the transition from dial up to Tracphones to smartphones and IMO the change hasn't slowed down, it's just become more distributed.

I recently designed a PCB for a custom built 3D printer for a tenth of the cost (fab + assembly) of a board of similar complexity I made nearly a decade ago and the final cost of the 3d printer (based on an open source design) was a 20th of the price of the Stratasys Dimension Elite I purchased, also a decade ago. One of my next projects is to make a DIY semiconductor fab using just TI DLP micromirrors and a microscope because I want to experiment with DIY bio microfluidics - all based on technology and knowledge so common that it has trickled down to the hobbyist level. We've now got people building electron microscopes and genetically modifying organisms in their garages!

The robots I've worked with in clinical diagnostics are much more advanced now than they were a decade ago and are now cheap enough for the average lab. The metrology instruments and machining tools necessary to make high precision parts have become commonplace at manufacturers, factory automation robotics like 6-DoF arms have trickled down to the researcher and hobbyist level in the last 5 years, and agriculture is currently going through it's n-th revolution with software, remote sensing, and data science.

Every time I leave an industry for a few years and come back, the pace of change is staggering - it's just hidden behind the iron curtain.

Re: The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

#39

Post by LatteLazy »

Corporations are basically unable to do R&D for a whole bunch of reasons. That's why we have all sorts of start ups and angle investment instead. Once an idea is half proven, then corporations can come in, finance it, run it effectively and market it etc. While also paying off the people actually taking the risk. This is a much better more efficient system for everyone.

Re: The rise and fall of the industrial R&D lab

#40

Post by thatcat »

LatteLazy wrote: post #39

Corporations are basically unable to do R&D for a whole bunch of reasons. That's why we have all sorts of start ups and angle investment instead. Once an idea is half proven, then corporations can come in, finance it, run it effectively and market it etc. While also paying off the people actually taking the risk. This is a much better more efficient system for everyone.

How is that better for R&D scientists and engineers? They now have to come up with a possible technology progression, secure funding, build out the tech using some secondary business model, and then convince the corp to buy their company. It only seems more efficient for the corporation.
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