Science is good for business

Financial Times

“Business is losing the innovation game,” said Tim Harford. There was a time when corporate labs at firms like Sony, IBM, and General Electric financed vital, expansive scientific research that won Nobel Prizes in fields such as chemistry and physics. “Companies weren’t afraid to invest in basic science,” because they knew that it fueled innovation and growth. But today, corporations have “reined in their ambitions.” Corporate research and development has become far narrower in scope, with a focus nearly entirely on practical applications—“less R, more D.” Companies are willing to settle for marginal gains that give them the “tiniest edge” over the competition,

and research is “outsourced to smaller outfits whose intellectual property can easily be bought and sold.” In the process, big companies have lost sight of the fact that most research on fundamental science “ends up being commercially useful eventually” and can lead to transformative advances. If universities could reliably fill the breach, that would be one thing. But we cannot rely on academic institutions to be the wellspring of all new ideas; scientific research is not cheap. Corporations “must continue to devote time, space, and money to bigger, riskier leaps.” It’s understandable that they “like the golden eggs,” but in the process, they “may be starving the golden goose.”