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by HWR_14 1425 days ago
Inapplicable research seems to exist at some corporations. I mean they hope that the net results will be profitable, but they're willing to fund a lot of stupid false starts to try to get something interesting.

Bell Labs is the best example, but Xerox PARC. Valve seems to have launched the VR revitalization.

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A woman I grew up as a neighbor to worked at Proctor and Gamble in a chemical research capacity, and they did random research fairly regularly that was interesting but did not result in productizaton.

Thing is… why wouldn’t we want product-relevant stuff? I mean… hating commerce is definitely a thing around here but the economy equates to the standard of living of humans. The ability to eat healthy foods, and enough to avoid malnutrition; to stay warm in winter and cool in summer (and thereby avoid death); to travel quickly and efficiently for economic, academic, leisure, or other reasons… these are all very important things that result from corporate research. People crap on it, but if any one of these things hadn’t happened half the humans alive today may well have died before age 10.