[dkyc]

It's not even clear that the premise is true. There's lots of 'research' done in the big tech companies.

The biggest reason why companies don't seek to emulate "Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE", is probably that it reads like a list of textbox examples of "companies that failed to execute on their research findings", so clearly there was something wrong with this approach.

[_aavaa_]

That isn’t what they’re textbooks examples of.

GE (under Jack Welch specifically) is a textbook example of how financialization and focusing on numbers at the expense of products destroys companies.

Kodak is a textbook example of disruption. Yes they failed to capitalize on digital cameras specifically, but their research in all other areas was very much acted upon.

[oblio]

Xerox and Kodak, at least, stumbled into the future and then refused it.

The same thing will happen to Google & co.

And DuPont is very much alive doing DuPont things.

[cloverich]

My mental model as an outsider, is the vibe out of Google is that they push the most talented folks out via process / politics. Not intentionally, just the reality of squeezing the creative type employee / work. Replacing creative smarts which is difficult or impossible to measure, with operational smarts, more easily measured. Those creative smart people mostly go on to start up other companies.

Its worked out ok for Google and others, because there's little teeth to anti monopoly, so all the big tech players can just buy the successes, which is safer than trying to grow them (esp. once the talent left). I really have no idea if this is an accurate take as its mostly vibes, sans for a few of said smart Google folks I've met in startup land(s). Yet Google is so big, they could bleed all kinds of employees telling all kinds of stories and it could all be simply random. Yet at the same time I can't help but think about every aging tech companies biggest / best products being via acquisition.

While I think monopoly is bad, I don't know if ^ otherwise is so bad. Maybe its just creative type folks _should_ avoid big tech, and build their own labs. Capital and compute are readily available to people who can demonstrate success, and its easier than ever to build and experiment in some fields. i.e. if we had stricter capital accumulation associated taxes, maybe the ills of this process wouldn't be so bad.

[bayindirh]

...and there's 3M and Würth.

[graycat]

It can appear that some famous companies pursue pure research as a source of public luster.

[ActorNightly]

The bigger problem today is that there is simply nothing more left to research. Everything that is being worked on are at most optimizations, which allways have a dollar spent vs dollar returned amount on them.

[bee_rider]

“While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice.” Albert A. Michelson (yes, that Michelson, one half of Michelson-Morley), 1894

If it feels like there’s nothing for us engineers to research, that’s probably a sign we need more basic research from the scientists!

[convolvatron]

that patently ridiculous, we're just getting started

[vpribish]

you will look back on this and feel so silly.