[Info-vax] OT: Is a New Model Needed for (new) Breakthroughs?

[Neil Rieck]

Taken for Granted: Is a New Model Needed for Breakthrough Science?

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2009_10_02/caredit.a0900119

This article begins by talking about the human organizational model
used to produce rapid progress (Manhattan Project, Moon Project, etc)
then goes on to mention the successful research institutions of
yesterday (Bell Labs, RCA Laboratories, Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center, etc) were some of the corporate profit was always feed back
into new research.

While reading this article, I recalled that Northern Electric at some
time morphed into Nortel, but that company didn't survive the dot-con
crisis when doing stock-swaps to acquire companies of questionable
value made more sense to upper management than basic research and
product development. Meanwhile, Cisco "kept their eyes on the prize"
and are the top dinosaur today.

While reading this article, I remembered that DEC "invented the UART"
as well as "the world's first commercial time sharing system (PDP-6)
which culminates with OpenVMS". That they invented PDP and VAX then
went on to create single-chip versions of those systems called LSI-11
and uVAX. And who could forget Alpha?

I also seem to remember that HP, when it was known as Hewlett-Packard,
had a research department, and used to invent new products. And that
after they rebranded to HP seemed to loose sight of their original
mission. For example, the shutdown of their research division was
delayed so that the researchers could prepare the announcement of the
discovery of the MEMRISTOR (it is such an annoyance when a CEO can't
kill a division because they just made a pesky new discovery (albeit
maybe the biggest thing since the bipolar transistor)). Today the new
business model appears to be "maximize profit by minimizing
development and support" (rephrased as "put a product on minimum life
support"). But using a farming paradigm: if you have got the goose
that lays golden eggs, then why would you ever attempt to maximize
profit by feeding it less grain?

And it also occurred to me that IBM today might be doing what they
always do: return (if just partially) to the methods that made them
great, then just bide your time while your competition makes bigger
mistakes than you do. There must have been some uncertainty with their
POWER line but imagine their good fortune when Compaq voluntarily
killed Alpha, HP voluntarily killed PA-RISC, and Oracle acquired Sun
then announced the death of ROCK (makes me wonder about the future of
SPARC or ULTRA SPARC). Sure IBM still needs to worry about Intel but
Intel is too busy trying to kill AMD/ATI so in the end there may be
only two major silicon producers. That is until clever young engineers
in China decide they want a piece of the action.

So let's hope we get back something like "Bell Labs"

Neil Rieck
Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/