[ksolanki]

At the risk of unpopularity, let me be the devils advocate here.

Warning: I am going to support 41 M investment in Color and will point out some odd issues with the way Ph.D./University research is funded.

What is the ideal environment for innovation? Give some hard problems to smart people, give them enough time and money to solve them. At the end even if the effort fails one learns what does not work. I feel that the people at Color Inc. have this sort of freedom with a committed 41M funding. No? Do you think all they will do with this freedom is just photo sharing? I doubt.

On the other hand, innovation gets stiffed by short term targets/pressures. It gets stiffed when you need your research proposals to go through a large peer review committee (at NIH or NSF). Why? Most innovative but unproven ideas are killed right there. Feature prominent people as co-investigators or consultants and your chance of funding greatly increases. Of course, this system is still better than in many other countries, but there is some room for improvement.