Comment by Empact | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Empact | Hacker News Reader

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Perhaps, but consider:

* Agile practice indicates that experience with users is the best way to keep project on a useful path. Research groups necessarily act without such input, which leaves them prone to going off into the weeds, including producing interesting technologies without a total appreciation for the practicalities, or a clear path to delivering it to users.

* One of Jobs' first acts on returning to Apple was to disband the research group (http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-203996.html). Why? I would guess because he wanted research to happen in the course of and for the purpose of innovative product development. There you can get the benefit of a user-focused development process, with a defined end result.

* As with any institution (e.g. NASA http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1092972), without accountability from strong leadership or users they're prone to unproductive efforts. After all, how do you judge the quality of their efforts? How can you motivate them to strive - day to day at all levels - to make an impact, when they have these cushy unaccountable ivory tower positions?

Or, more practically, what has MSR produced that's active in changing the world, compared to a handful of startups acquired by Apple?

Or, more practically, what has MSR produced that's active in changing the world, compared to a handful of startups acquired by Apple?

the premise of funding basic research (as opposed applied product-driven research) is that only by giving researchers freedom from short-term demands can it be possible for them to do something truly innovative and 'out of the mold'. a 'classic' example is all the work done by brilliant researchers at Xerox PARC in the '70's that was way ahead of its time; of course, Xerox execs have been kicking themselves in the rear for not capitalizing on those technologies (Apple and Microsoft did), but the hope is that Microsoft will be smarter than Xerox was and actually capitalize on basic research created in MSR. Giving researchers freedom will breed lots of supposedly-useless work (that's only useful or interesting to academics), but it provides a greater possibility of doing something totally game-changing.

Since you bring up Xerox PARC, don't/didn't they suffer from the same problem? Lack of/poor marketing?

You raise some great points there- the best is qualifying what kind of research is actually a good thing.

It may (I'm skeptical though) that an agile business can thrive without investing in research.

But then, who invents the future (say the Fusion kind of 30-year-future pointed at above)?Our fallback is an underfunded university system, but it lacks market insight.

At this point, I don't really know if product-embedded research is the way to go. Apple seems to be pretty good at this-behold multitouch everything-but I'm curious how they work- How do they hire researchers for instance? If someone knows, please share.

You raise some great points there- the best is qualifying what kind of research is actually a good thing.

It may (I'm skeptical though) that an agile business can thrive without investing in research.

But then, who invents the future (say the Fusion kind of 30-year-future pointed at above)?Our fallback is an underfunded university system, but it lacks market insight.

At this point, I don't really know if product-embedded research is the way to go. Apple seems to be pretty good at this-behold multitouch everything-but I'm curious how they work- How do they hire researchers for instance? If someone knows, please share.

You raise some great points there- the best is qualifying what kind of research is actually a good thing.

It may (I'm skeptical though) that an agile business can thrive without investing in research.

But then, who invents the future (say the Fusion kind of 30-year-future pointed at above)?Our fallback is an underfunded university system, but it lacks market insight.

At this point, I don't really know if product-embedded research is the way to go. Apple seems to be pretty good at this-behold multitouch everything-but I'm curious how they work- How do they hire researchers for instance? If someone knows, please share.

> Or, more practically, what has MSR produced that's active in changing the world, compared to a handful of startups acquired by Apple?

I see a lot of great stuff coming out of MSR; their Simons are almost single-handedly responsible for GHC's internals and over the last 2 decades making Haskell a usable, nay, fast, language. But what OSs is Haskell principally developed & used on? Linux or OSX.

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