🔬 The Rise and Fall of the R&D Lab →
August 31, 2020 • #Corporate research was a big deal in the mid-20th century. In this piece, Ben Southwood inspects why we no longer have modern equivalents to research centers like Xerox PARC or Bell Labs.
An interesting point here on what might be demotivating large organizations to invest too much in deep research:
Another possible answer is that non-policy developments have steadily made spillovers happen faster and more easily. Technology means faster communication and much more access to information. An interconnected and richer world doing more research means more competitors. And while all of these are clearly good, they reduce the technology excludability of new ideas, even if legal excludability hasn’t changed, and so may have reduced the returns to innovation by individual businesses.
Related Posts
- We Live Like Royalty and Don't Know It — Charles Mann on the unseen, unappreciated wonders of modern infrastructure.
- Weekend Reading: Non-Experts, Non-Linear Innovation, and We Were Builders — The rise of non-experts, innovation and linearity, and our history as builders.
- Progress is Not Automatic — Innovation doesn't happen while we wait around, it's something that we choose to pursue, even if it doesn't always look that way.