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by andiamo
2218 days ago
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I have a different take on this: corporate research labs died because we aggressively clamped down on monopolies. When you don't have a monopoly, the investor mindset is that the company should be laser-focused on "core competencies" (buzzword, but important) and return excess capital to shareholders - who then provide it to other companies that will innovate in the field. Keep in mind, the universe of alternative investments go beyond the stock market/PE/VC. Capital is tied to shareholder value. When you can't point to something creating value, there isn't a reason for capital to stay. For a company to maintain a research lab, it needs to be perceived as something other than a cost center. In contrast, Bell was able to entertain its own full-fledged R&D labs because shareholders expected them to create new avenues of profit themselves because they were the monopoly. |
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But at the same time, we've seen a decline in corporate R+D since the start of the neoliberal era - the article mentions that this started at around Nixon's time. This is the period of time where Milton Friedman's ideas started to gain widespread acceptance:
>“there is one and only one social responsibility of business– to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game,”
Many organisations have taken the idea of "profits over everything", and interpreted it as "quarterly profits over everything". R+D labs don't result in quarterly profits. Much of the research ends up being profitable years down the track. So corporate R+D is killed off.