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No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

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Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#31

Post by ninetyninenine »

zkmon wrote: post #25

>> Scientists are driven by curiosity Ok, then why do they get affected by funding? The truth is, today there is not a scientist, artist, researcher or writer who is not driven by funding. The era for curiosity-driven science is was over a long time ago. The direction of research or science is all driven by funding.

Everything in the world is driven by money. There was never such a thing as curiosity driven science.

What pays for your leisure time so you can be alive and not starve? Money. Nobody on the face of the earth can just be curious and do science and not starve.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#33

Post by bluecalm »

cratermoon wrote: post #21
terminalshort wrote: post #3

> In the 20th century, U.S. companies put their excess profits into corporate research labs. Basic research in the U.S. was done in at Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE, et al. This changed in 1982, when the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that it was legal for companies to buy their own stock (reducing the number of shares available to the public and inflating their stock price.) Very quickly B…

Note the "maximize shareholder value" aspect. That's the essential driving force behind business since then: The Friedman doctrine. Now consider the choices a company makes when executives hold the Friedman doctrine as orthodoxy. Put money into basic research that might generate shareholder value in some unknown time, or buy their own stock back and pump up the price?

Buying back stock is just as a way to distribute money to shareholders. It's neutral when it comes to "shareholder value". It's the same as paying dividends and having some shareholders reinvest it.

It just saves an extra step and doesn't trigger tax event. It also makes more sense. If you prefer cash you sell it on the market to the company. If you prefer holding shares you don't do anything. You get a choice when it cash out instead of being forced to on regular basis.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#35

Post by barkingdog48 »

zkmon wrote: post #25

>> Scientists are driven by curiosity Ok, then why do they get affected by funding? The truth is, today there is not a scientist, artist, researcher or writer who is not driven by funding. The era for curiosity-driven science is was over a long time ago. The direction of research or science is all driven by funding.

[flagged]

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#37

Post by wbl »

photochemsyn wrote: post #20
terminalshort wrote: post #3

> In the 20th century, U.S. companies put their excess profits into corporate research labs. Basic research in the U.S. was done in at Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE, et al. This changed in 1982, when the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that it was legal for companies to buy their own stock (reducing the number of shares available to the public and inflating their stock price.) Very quickly B…

The article doesn't mention that Bayh-Dole made it legal for a university to exclusively license a patent generated by a government-financed researcher to a corporation. Prior to this, if a corporation wanted to have exclusive rights to basic patents, they'd have to run their own private research labs to generate those patents. Prior to Bayh-Dole, university inventions were patented but there were no exclusive licens…

Repealing Bayh-Dole is a terrible idea. A lot of research produces enough to get a patent but still requires a lot more development to get a product. Drugs are probably the best example.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#38

Post by j2kun »

> Engineers design and build things on top of the discoveries of scientists

I agree with a lot in this post, but I think it's also worth mentioning how this is a two-way street. Practical considerations often drive theory research as much as the other way around.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#39

Post by ninetyninenine »

Larrikin wrote: post #28
aeonik wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's short term thinking. You can't stop innovation across the planet, you will lose control over time as adversaries continue to innovate and subsume antiquated control structures.

All the people in charge currently are banking on being rich, enjoying society as they have made it, and then dead before it personally affects them.

Nah it’s more complicated than that. They need to lie to themselves first. They need to build a scaffold of logic that proves and justifies there actions before they do it.

Hitler for example thought he was justified. And so do all the people who claim global warming isn’t real.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#40

Post by _aavaa_ »

dkyc wrote: post #29
terminalshort wrote: post #3

> In the 20th century, U.S. companies put their excess profits into corporate research labs. Basic research in the U.S. was done in at Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE, et al. This changed in 1982, when the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that it was legal for companies to buy their own stock (reducing the number of shares available to the public and inflating their stock price.) Very quickly B…

It's not even clear that the premise is true. There's lots of 'research' done in the big tech companies. The biggest reason why companies don't seek to emulate "Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE", is probably that it reads like a list of textbox examples of "companies that failed to execute on their research findings", so clearly there was something wrong with this approach.

That isn’t what they’re textbooks examples of.

GE (under Jack Welch specifically) is a textbook example of how financialization and focusing on numbers at the expense of products destroys companies.

Kodak is a textbook example of disruption. Yes they failed to capitalize on digital cameras specifically, but their research in all other areas was very much acted upon.

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