Where Have You Gone, Bell Labs? 552
theodp writes "Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years, challenges BusinessWeek. You can't, because there isn't one. And that's the problem. So what's the answer? Basic research can repair the broken US business model, argues BW, saying it's the key to new, high-quality job creation. Scientific research legends like Bell Labs, Sarnoff Corp, and Xerox PARC are essentially gone, or shadows of their former selves. And while IBM, Microsoft, and HP collectively spend $17B a year on R&D, only 3%-5% of that is for basic science. In a post-9/11 world, DARPA's mission has shifted from science to tactical projects with short-term military applications. Cutting back on investment in basic science research may make great sense in the short term, but as corporations and government make the same decision to free-ride off the investments of others, society suffers the 'tragedy of the commons,' wherein multiple actors operating in their self-interest do harm to the overall public good. We've reached that point, says BW, and we're just beginning to see the consequences. The cycle needs to be reversed, and it needs to be done quickly."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:YES I CAN! (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually that is cynical and I beg to differ here. Obama is actually right on the mark. The green revolution is important and we need it. Not because of global warming. I really could not give a rats ass about that since it is already too late. Read National Geographic about 4 years ago they had a climate article where they said that they noticed climate change happened like a flick of the switch, but bounced back slowly. They were of the opinion that the switch has probably already been flicked.
So why green revolution? Because the heat waves, droughts, storms, etc will cause upheaval and if we have technology to deal with this new reality we as a human race will survive. The green revolution is about using other forms of energy, and becoming more efficient. Both of these things are great steps forward regardless of climate change...
Individual (Score:3, Interesting)
as corporations and government make the same decision to free-ride off the investments of others, society suffers the 'tragedy of the commons,
How about the individual? You know, the type that parrots around here against the patent system (or at the very least, software patents), and screaming how they use Pirate Bay to protest them? How about the individuals who demand our government buy price-controlled medicine from Canada to deny the organization who discovered it the fruits of their labor, and the ability to recoup their investment?
Creators and inventors see a hostile environment for profiting off their works, so they stop investing in creating and inventing. Film at 11.
How I think it all started, and more (Score:5, Interesting)
The combination of the higher ups wanting short term profits due to changes in tax law, along with many fewer R&D companies (HP for example) having engineers and technical people making decisions has decimated R&D.
I remember when HP meant test equipment and awesome calculators, not lousy consumer based computers (Thanks Carly). Another example, don't laugh too hard, is Radio Shack. I used to work for Radio Shack in the late 80's and the early 90's. When I started, they actually had R&D (they had a dye based CD-R technology they were working on, but had RIAA type problems with), manufacturing, a lot of electronic components, etc. When the founder of Tandy died, the MBA style management came in. They started off selling manufacturing, as that was not part of the "Core Business", sold off the credit card division, which made a nice one time profit, that then really made customers made because of lack of customer service, and lowered sales because of tighter credit requirements. They stopped carrying a lot of small parts, because of the low dollar value, regardless if they were high profit. In short, Charles Tandy, the leather salesman, ran it better and more profitably than the "business school" people that were bought in because he understood the business. We need to find a way to encourage the people who know the business they are in to get higher up and make decisions, rather than feeding the orgy of MBA's and people with business degrees that now rule most companies. As to how, I have very little in the way of ideas, but I think some tax law encouraging long term and pure science R&D would be helpful, if it could not be bastardized for other purposes (yeah, I know, a pipe dream).
The money AT&T didn't make from Bell Labs (Score:2, Interesting)
It's incredible how successful other companies were at commercializing the amazing basic discoveries or inventions that came out of Bell Labs (transistor, laser, Unix, etc. etc. etc.), and somehow AT&T never was all that successful at commercializing these discoveries, and ended up spinning off Bell Labs and selling out to SBC.
Bell Labs held many, many patents from all this basic research, that ultimately weren't nearly as profitable as the inventions that used them. Lessons for those who insist that IP rights are key to innovation.
Combination of Factors (Score:3, Interesting)
The first factor that has to be corrected is the entire Education System in the United States because until the many problems (rote memorization favored over critical thinking) is fixed, we simply wont have the bodies needed to do any basic research. The next factor that has to be solved is the Governments continual slide into Mediocracy and illeteracy that's been desired by the Corps and Politico's for the last 30 years. Sorry folks but that's at least 2 generations (not counting the current and future gens) that have been robbed of our Constitutional Requirement for both an educated and armed populace. Instead they've wanted sheep and now they've got them who don't care about anything except where their next fix is coming from (be it telivision, latest hip product, drugs).
Sorry to say but if the founding fathers were to attempt a revolution with our current tranqed populace today, they'd have failed and been executed as terrorists instead of hailed as hero's. In fact, General Orders to HighGaurd. Time to throw a Nova Bomb into Sol's Sun and clear the cockroaches before they spread to the rest of the galaxy.
But we don't like monopolies... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting to note that most of the top-tier research facilities of the past were backed by monopoly or near-monopoly corporations. Bell Telephone speaks for itself, IBM Labs was supported by revenue of a dominating computer manufacturer, Sarnoff is the old lab facility of RCA, which for a time had sufficient clout to pretty much set the price of vacuum tubes. Xerox was the dominant photocopier supplier in an era of large growth. In today's world, Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders on research, and they have their own cash cow from a software monopoly.
One wonders if the ability to fund basic research depends on having a nearly monopolistic revenue stream. And if that's the case, are we prepared to suffer monopolies to get the research that comes with them?
Re:It's all about profit.And there is none here (Score:4, Interesting)
" Doing research now that pays dividends 10 years from now is simply not OK. "
And that wouldn't even be considered basic science which means more of "30 years from now, or maybe never".
Re:Greentech! (Score:1, Interesting)
So called greentech hasn't been implemented because it doesn't pencil out. Wind and solar can't do it. It doesn't pencil out even for environmental reasons. The chief environmental reason, AGW, is a contrivance anyway. Strangely, the most hated technology solution to our energy problems, nuclear power, is the solution that will work the best. The problem here is not technological. The problem is political. The perceived risk of nuclear is far out of whack with the actual risk. The perceived benefit of green is far out of whack with the actual benefit. If you turn the energy problem over to engineers, we will solve it in short order.
Environmentalists who proclaim, "Science, Science." don't really support a solution to the problem other than for people to revert to some idyllic notion of life without technology.
5+% of revenue on very long term return (Score:4, Interesting)
So firms must find the 5%. This happens through efficiencies and prices. A choice must be made between all those wasteful middle managers that do nothing, or research.Everyone has a useless in law that needs a job, so create another wasteful middle manager position. Or perhaps someone needs external validation, so build another wasteful highrise to stroke someone ego.
The there is profit. The pharmaceutical firms are doing research, but then what happens when they try to pay for the research? Everyone screams, like drugs are an entitlement. It is the pursuit of happiness, but the entitle to it. Is everyone going to be able to afford all drugs in the US. Perhaps is universal healthcare is passed, otherwise it will be the free market deciding that those with money will live, and those without will just have to make do.
Then, of course, on has to convince the stockholders that a reduction in per share profit is a good thing. Not an easy sell when many will buy solely on the basis of net profit.
I am not sure if industrial research labs are going to work in the current climate. Research based companies seem to get clobbered by those who merely derive products from the research. The model emerging over the past 20 years of so, private public research partnerships, seem to be a pretty good job. The reason we see so little of it in the US is that owners of firms are primarily concerned abut their 100 million dollar paychecks, not the long term effects they have on the company, the country, and the world. Why else would the auto manufacturers not use their windfall over the past decade to build the next big thing. Why would oil companies use their windfall to create false document, a la big tobacco, against alternative energy sources rather than develop those alternative energy source. Why else would MS buy a virtualization company, way before MS Vista, a not integrate that technology into Vista to form a transitional compatibility layer, as Apple did between OS 9 and OS X.
Really, research labs are not the issue, cowardice is. When we have leaders that are not scared of their own shadows, when we have leaders that will go out a defend us against the real enemy, and not waste a trillion dollars attacking a fake proxy enemy or create FUD to distract us, then we will have progress.
Is basic research mined out? (Score:5, Interesting)
A real question is whether basic research mines a depleting resource. The issue is not whether more can be discovered. The question is whether basic research is still cost-effective.
The problem is that we've found most of the easy hits in science and technology. Edison's lab, circa 1880, had a goal of one minor invention every three days and one major invention every two months. This was with a rather modest staff, about 40 people. In no area of science is that level of output possible today. Everything that easy has already been done.
One guy built the first IC in two months at Texas Instruments, without much help. Several early microprocessors were designed by teams of about 5 people. It took 3,000 people, in grey cubicles in Santa Clara, to design the Pentium Pro/II/III architecture, the first superscalar IC. (Getting a working design out of 3000 people for something as tightly integrated as a fast superscalar CPU for a complex architecture was an incredible management achievement.)
Xerox PARC, in its heyday, had a nearly open field in which to work. PARC was funded on the concept that if they did things which cost too much now, they'd be affordable later and Xerox would own the technology. So they built things like the Dover (a $100,000 laser printer) and the Alto (a $30,000 single-user computer), and they built enough of them to be useful experimentally. So they were able to make major progress with about 40 people in the computer science section. (PARC seemed bigger, but a big part of PARC was copier technology development. Everybody forgets those people, but they filled much of the building.) Now it takes resources like that to develop a midrange cell phone.
There's a curve here, it gets steeper, and not in a good way. The easy stuff is discovered/invented first, then the harder stuff. Each new bit of progress comes at a higher price. It's like mining lower and lower grade ore as the good stuff runs out.
Those are places I know about and visited at one time or another, all in semiconductors and electronics. I can't speak for biotech, which seems not to be as far up the curve yet. On the other hand, consider aviation and rocketry, where the easy part ended in the 1960s. Look at progress in aviation between 1903 and 1956 (Wright Flyer to Boeing 707), then 1956 to 2009 (Boeing 707 to Boeing 787). Or rocketry between 1929 and 1969 (Goddard rocket to Apollo) and 1969 to 2009 (Apollo to Shuttle).
Re:The money AT&T didn't make from Bell Labs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The money AT&T didn't make from Bell Labs (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe the conclusion you drew is incorrect because it was based on the faulty assumption that Bell Labs tried to commercialize and profit off its products, when in fact it could not.
Indeed. And the same point should probably be made about Xerox PARC; a lot of really good basic research went on there, but the management of the company had little clue what to actually do with it. The graphical user interface, the WYSIWYG word processor, object-oriented programming -- all of these were PARC innovations, and Xerox did almost nothing to commercialise them. In the end, Xerox was simply content with being a photocopier manufacturer. Laser printers were close enough to that core business to fit in; graphical networked workstations, operating systems and programming langauges weren't.
Re:Is basic research mined out? (Score:5, Interesting)
I find this to be a narrow-minded view, despite the points well-taken about research getting harder and harder in general.
Case in point: mobile-phone technology. How many patents have been generated from that? How many new jobs around the world? You'd have thought the "hard-part" of basic radio research was over long ago.
Sure, the low-hanging fruit has been plucked. However, we have so much more knowledge to build on and such better tools these days with which to do the research that, even though the overall job is harder, it can be done quicker and more efficiently than ever before.
Curves/trends are useful for predictions, until something comes along that no longer fits. And it's impossible to predict when that something will arrive. But if we don't fund basic research adequately, it'll likely take that much longer.
Re:Greentech! (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not obvious at all. While it's true, Green tech can produce a few high paying jobs in research, development, and management... The bulk of the jobs are going to be [relatively] low paying grunt work out in the field installing the things.
Re:How I think it all started, and more (Score:4, Interesting)
I think a lot of the lack of R&D goes back to decisions made many years ago by the government. At one point all employee salaries regardless of how outrageous they were were a deductible expense.
This sounds fishy to me. Can you cite the change in the tax code? I am not a tax accountant, but it's my understanding salaries are in fact still "deductible" in the sense that they count as an expense against profits. Are you saying they used to be deductible against gross revenue? And how does this fit in with the large "bonuses" that are essentially high salary compensation?
I'd agree that regardless of the tax structure, though, the principal-agent problem [wikipedia.org] and short-term thinking is... well, a problem.
I remember when HP meant test equipment and awesome calculators, not lousy consumer based computers (Thanks Carly).
The interesting thing is about Carly's reign is that even by short-sighted Wall Street analyst standards, it should serve as a pretty bright warning sign for suits looking to dismantle an engineering company. HP's value dropped "down two-thirds from its peak" [msn.com] while she was running the company and jumped up over 10% at one point the day the news of her ousting broke [cnn.com].
(Now, of course, she's going into politics. For some reason McCain took her on as an economic adviser for a while, despite her track record. Which she appears to think qualifies her as a brilliant candidate for the U.S. Senate.)
The purpose of patents and role of business (Score:5, Interesting)
In reading some of the comments, people don't seem to understand the purpose of patents.
The true purpose of patents are not so much to act as incentives to innovate, that will happen anyway as long as innovation can produce a profit though the innovation becomes a trade secret.
The purpose of patents is information sharing. The patent holder is given a monopoly for a limited time but must reveal the workings of the innovation. By revealing the information others can study it, improve it and use it to advance the state of the art.
I hope this BW article doesn't lead to the same lunacy to extend patents that happened with copy rights to "incetivize" innovation since that would defeat the purpose.
Also, the short term view that the business school developed in business "leaders" is nothing more than self cannibalization. Tech companies have been devouring themselves, riding on technology they developed years ago and not laying ground work for future profitability through solid basic research.
In addition, by outsourcing and offshoring they have been choking off their own sources of future leadership in personnel. The skilled workers they need are developing their skills working for other companies.
Here's my observations. Many of the IT people of my generation began as help desk (some times part-time while in school or summer jobs), the jr. sys-admins or consulting finally working their way up to senior positions or creating their own companies'. They sometimes were hired internally to a company since they knew the company and the company knew them. That path allowed for slow gradual developed of skill sets, maturation and exploration of interests. With offshoring and outsourcing that path is becoming rarer. And so now companies when they do look for IT/programmers bemoan the lack of skilled workers.
This also creates a chilling effect when people look for careers in the Sciences, esp. when it is easier to get an MBA than a Phd.
I tried to make these points to a Phd in Chemistry who had worked his way up into mgt. in a pharmaceutical company which was offshoring research, but he didn't get it. A bright guy, but he didn't get it.
Federal R&D is damaged too (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Who is this "we" and "our"? And, how did "we" encourage creativity, research and learning?
Basic research is a source of economic competitiveness, which is why "we" don't need the government trying to direct economic competitiveness. Why should we believe that the government will do a better job of figuring out what needs to be developed than the free market? This is the same government that thought "Cash for Clunkers" was a good idea -- allowing people to turn in a 5-year-old car that gets 20 mpg for a new Hummer that gets about 10!
The original question was "What will produce 1 million jobs in the next three years"? I don't know. But, I suggest that there have been very few times in history when "we" did know the answer to this question. But, that's the great thing about capitalism -- somebody, someplace, has an idea for something revolutionary and is starting up a company to take advantage of it. They see the opportunity to make money, so they're going after that opportunity.
Think about what would happen if we tried to transfer that to the government: "Hmm.. Mr. Smith. I see that you have a great idea that will change lives. Once you submit your idea, we'll assign it to the department of novel inventions, which will study your idea and, in a few years, decide whether it's worth asking the Congress to fund. Right now, Sen. So-and-So is in charge of Committee Thus-n-Such, so be sure that your submission talks about how many people in his state will be hired. Oh, and it better fit in with the President's new economic plan. If it doesn't, then your idea will never be implemented."
The premise of the original question is strange -- apparently, the value of the research isn't in the amount of benefit that people get from it; the value is in the number of jobs that are needed to support it. Under this logic, a more efficient air-conditioning system is better if it requires thousands of trained technicians to keep it running than if homeowners could install and repair it themselves. How twisted is that?
Re:YES I CAN! (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the price doesn't reflect the costs. If you were actually paying with your dollars for the externalities, things would be very different. But the only way to do that is by some non-market entity forcing against someone's will.
This seems to be a talking point you guys have memorized pretty well. The AC got there before you.
By using "externalities" as FUD, you can justify anything just by pretending they're high on the competitive product.
Re:Surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's not the business model that is broken. (Score:2, Interesting)
If one could make millions in the U.S. by getting the nation into debt, then retire to another country that is benefiting from the debt, they win. It is only the poor, who can not leave, that are dependent on the nation in which they live to be successful.
Re:The money AT&T didn't make from Bell Labs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Basic research in Ireland - billions spent (Score:1, Interesting)
I was a spectator to some of the investment in Irish R&D - I work at a multi-national that is on the edges of the FP5, 6 & 7 nightmares, so things like Media Lab Dublin come into view from time to time.
The mistake that the Irish made is simple: they believed people from elsewhere in nice suits or with super hair knew more than the tired and dusty academics at Trinity. The reason they believed them is that these wankers from the US and Germany told them *what they wanted to hear* rather than the locals who *told them the truth*
What they wanted to hear was that anything was possible, implementing it was easy and in five years money would roll in and allow them to become a super power in the knowledge economy of the future.
The truth was that there are limited horizons for a small european nation, everything is bloody hard and it will take 20 years.
Then you will have a world class R&D base, and you will be able to build industries (slowly) around it.
The outcome is simple. The Irish have flushed their cash and any opportunity down the drain.
Those chaps at Trinity must be laughing!
Oh.. wait..
Funny that, they seem dreadfully upset about it. Hmmm...
Look at the fellas from the outside, they seem remarkably unbothered...
Hmmm?
Re:Want to get more basic research? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think anyone is saying that athletes should donate their money to science, or that the government should take it all, or whatever. However, the fact that athletes make SO much money shows how warped our society's values are. People don't want to spend 1 cent extra for something with long-term value (like scientific research), but they're perfectly happy to spend $2000 (no joke) on seats at a football game, or to waste their time and money watching a football game on pay-per-view TV. The huge demand for this brainless sports industry, and the consequential enormous amount of money flowing through it, is what allows them to pay athletes so much. So it's not like the athletes are taking it wrongfully; the individual citizens in our society are willingly forking it over. So again, this just shows that our citizens are idiots and don't spend their money wisely.
But whining for more dollars to be funneled from rich folks' pockets into whatever project the government body in charge of spending their money thinks is worthwhile this week isn't the way to encourage it.
No, that probably won't work either. Has the American government spent our tax dollars wisely in the past 10-20 years? I don't think so. Useless wars in foreign countries, a failed "war on drugs", a road to nowhere, bailouts of failed companies amounting to rewarding failure, and on and on. Meanwhile, they've cut NASA's budget over and over and over. Taking more money from American taxpayers (rich or not) isn't going to result in significant positive effects in science, because our government is so corrupt that the money will be wasted. It's like giving money to the Mexican government and expecting improvement; their government is so blatantly corrupt that it's impossible. Our government is just as corrupt, it's just not so obvious and no one wants to admit it.
So what's the answer? I have no idea.
Spaceship Earth (Score:4, Interesting)
Randomly invoking "externality" is a bad policy. But when you look at oil, unless you are willing to be totally ignorant of modern history, you can see the cost of externalities are extraordinarily high.
How many governments have been overthrown? How much money has been spent in the middle east to secure access to oil or to prevent someone else from getting it? (Don't feed me any lines about freedom or security. I'm not as credulous as as that, thank you.) What has the environmental cost been? And all of this to go into a transportation system in the US that is the most inefficient user of energy probably in world history. (3% of the population using 25% of the world supply). To a consumer system that can't even be bothered to recycle what it's already dug out of the earth.
Now, to the second and more important point, you cannot show me a single study published in the last thirty years that demonstrates that any part of our ecosystem is healthier than it was the year before. Maybe in some extremely local cases there has been progress, but on the whole, every year the earth becomes less capable of supporting life.
If we were all on a spaceship, and every year our oxygen recycling system became less able to do it's job, you'd start to panic once it got below 90% of capacity. If we had 1% less food, and became less able to replenish our supply each year, you'd start to really think hard about that problem once we get to 70% of our original stock. At least I would hope.
Well here's the newsflash. This Earth is the only known spaceship in the universe that can support human life. Every year, it becomes less capable of doing so. Every year, it comes closer to switching it's equilibrium to a state that may or may not kill us off, as it has done for 98% of all the species that have come before us. And though our production is extraordinary right now, our entire way of life is based on the artificially low cost of energy in the form of oil. It's in our pesticides, we use it to produce electricity, transport all food, and the man hours required for agriculture without it is unimaginable. Imagine construction without hydraulic equipment powered by diesel. Imagine creating medical devices without plastic. It's even in every single device we manufacture, and it's not easy to replace. We're going to use the oil produced over 200 million years in 150. That's like saving money for 100 years and spending it in 40 minutes. So the real answer is that oil is very, very valuable, and shouldn't be wasted to make our generation the most comfortable in history, and the next generation the last to have electricity 24 hours a day.
What is the value of having a biosphere that supports human life? What sort of premium would you place on the price of oil to account for that external cost to the people who consume it and the people who drag it out of the earth? Even the staunchest and dumbest libertarian would have trouble answering "zero." At least I would hope so.
Re:YES I CAN! (Score:2, Interesting)
By using "externalities" as FUD, you can justify anything just by pretending they're high on the competitive product.
Why are externalities necessarily FUD? The point of calling something FUD is because it isn't true, or at least creates artificial controversy: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt where there needs be none. Do you mean to say that all the effects of power generation are currently accounted for in the monetary cost of electricity?
This isn't just some bash on pollution, no power-generating method's hands are clean. We subsidized nuclear research, and continue to alternate incentive and sabotage for nuclear power plants. Hydro is often controversial in its changing the environment and habitat around it. We have the massive boondoggle of corn-based ethanol, thanks to the agricultural lobby. Around the world, political suasion is used all the time to keep the gas flowing. Now we're talking about ramping up incentives for solar and other green tech, and suddenly it's too much?
It's incredibly naive to argue that there is anything resembling a free market to promote the best option with respect to power generation. We've been kingmakers ever since there was an option. It's time to recognize this and act accordingly.
Re:Greentech! (Score:3, Interesting)
You're confusing the issue. The "eco-hippies" that want less pollution also ask for simpler lifestyles, "organic" food, and other impractical ideas.
Fail. AIWPS [sdsu.edu] or similar technologies used in place of "conventional" wastewater treatment would allow us to produce more than adequate supplies of organic fertilizer, and if we planted crops in guilds instead of monocultures the production of food per acre would rise substantially. This would of course eliminate the ability to harvest mechanically, but since most people are not really getting good nutrition under the current system (which requires that the crops be shipped long distances, so they are grown for shipping and not nutrition, and then often picked unripe and gassed to give the appearance of freshness) it should be regarded as a failure anyway. Big agribusiness spends a lot of money to convince us that we need to buy their particular products every year, because they know how susceptible the masses are to advertising.
Only one of those groups is going to get what they want. Organic food off family farms and "buying local" is a non starter. So is "local generation."
Any jackass can get on eBay and get a grid-tie solar system that you literally plug into the wall.
Re:One Research Lab is Still Hiring... (Score:4, Interesting)
One of my best friends did that long, long ago. He had horror stories of the dank, dark, dangerous underground secret base beneath Disney...
You see, the workers aren't allowed to be seen in the park. They aren't allowed to be seen out of costume. EVER. So the park has a massive underground network to get them from one part to another.
Sex, drugs, and violence, in a secret underground network, beneath the shining face of Disney above. It's a fantastic metaphor for the company itself.
Bell labs is still alive! (Score:1, Interesting)
There is still plenty of Fundamental work going on at Bell Labs (Actually, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs). It's just that in this day and age, Alcatel has made the decision, rightly so, that the research the labs do should focus around core business - so you'll find a lot of work on optical switching, chip fabrication and network theory. They are also doing a lot in holographics and 3dtv.
Bell labs still employs some of the biggest names in the business. and it pays to consider that as we learn more the idea that 'fundamental' research just involves physics. There is much intellectial work to be done in fundamentals - computer science is a good example.
Don't expect any business to plow money into research that doesn't have a filter-up benefit to their core businesses any time soon - it doesn't make sence for them, and I can see their point of view.
Re:Individual (Score:4, Interesting)
How is your typical tirade of class envy rated 5? Yeah, the only people who defend the idea that people should keep what they make should be the rich. Everyone else should vote with their caste! Poor? Vote for the party of free money, don't work to advance yourself!
This kind of attitude is a big reason we are in the debacle we are in now.
Goverment Lab's Need A Reset (Score:1, Interesting)
In my few years in a Gov. lab I have witnessed a shift in focus from outcomes to process. The major priorities have (internally speaking) shifted to safety, computer security, and accounting rules. Science is the mission but that mission will be conducted in the most safe/secure/accountable box. I attribute this shift to the lack of a few singular important goals (say hydrogen fuel - or fusion energy. a la Manhattan project style) to hundreds of minutely focused activities. DC is also trying to manage ALL of projects from DC - THEY SHOULD BE MANAGING GOALS and leave the details to the local talent.
Who was it that said..."If government labs had existed in the Stone Age we never would have mad it to the Iron Age; but we would have very fine stone axes."