[acomjean]

I worked at IBM research for a bit (TJ Watson center Yorktown), when Gerstner was the CEO. They had PHDs chemists and physicists and mathematicians working on all sorts of things chip related. They had a mini fab in the building. I remember them testing building vibration levels.

Turning technology into something that can me manufactured and sold was something was something definetely on the mind of research. IBM was spending 6 Billion a year on research and they were looking for more results out of it.

They knew that an discovery/invention was good, but one that could be brought to market was better. The licensed a lot of their tech to the chip machine manufacturers if I remember correctly. Plus back in those days IBM had chip making facilities.