The death of corporate research labs
Hold on.  Corporate research labs are _fundamentally different_ than academic research labs.<p>Why?  Time horizon.<p>Companies will not fund research that has a more-than-20-year expected time to product.  Usually, they won&#x27;t fund things that will take more than 10 years to go from R&amp;D to product.  That&#x27;s because of investment-- think about startups, what LP wants to put money in a fund for more than 20 years?<p>On the other hand, academic labs, funded by governments, often do work that pays off more than 20 years later.  Think about Watson and Crick - their work on DNA in the 40s and 50s led to antibody drugs in the 1980s that are now being used widely today.<p>Bell Labs was the exception that tried to do long-term, basic research work, and its failure proves that corporate funding will eventually dry up for any long-term research.  There&#x27;s just no business case.<p>The US has the biggest tech and biotech economy in the world because the <i>US government</i> (that is, US citizens and US society) was smart to fund longterm basic research at the highest level in the world, building universities that attract some of the best talent in the world.  Corporate research labs do more short-term work.