Comment by alankay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alankay | Hacker News Reader

Bob fully embraced the deeply romantic "ARPA Dream" of personal computing and pervasive networking. His true genius was in being able to "lead by getting others to lead and cooperate" via total commitment, enormous confidence in his highly selected researchers expressed in all directions, impish humor, and tenacious protection of the research.

He was certainly the greatest "research manager" in his field, and because of this had the largest influence in a time of the greatest funding for computing research. It is impossible to overpraise his impact and to describe just how he used his considerable personality to catalyze actions.

The key idea was to have a great vision yet not try to drive it from the funders on down, but instead "fund people not projects" by getting the best scientists in the world to "find the problems to solve" that they thought would help realize the vision.

An important part of how this funding was carried out was not just to find the best scientists, but to create them. Many of the most important researchers at Xerox PARC were young researchers in ARPA funded projects. Bob was one of the creators of this process and carried it out at ARPA, Xerox PARC, and DEC.

He was one of those unique people who was a central factor in a deep revolution of ideas.

"An important part of how this funding was carried out was not just to find the best scientists, but to create them."

Is anyone doing this today?

Bell Labs had this practice in the early 20th century, ARPA, Xerox PARC, and DEC it seems in the latter thanks to Bob.

"Create/develop the best" isn't a mentality or practice that I see in the tech world today. Unfortunately it's an idea and practice that also seems lost in my own field of education.

Maybe at Microsoft they could be said to be in that league in the early 21st century, but that seems to be decaying away now. Google has their X lab or whatever the latest name for it is - that seems to be pointed toward solving a lot of world problems (automated driving, internet access for all). It's sad and amazing to think how the us govt funded a lot of fundamental science and how they has been reduced over time - compare the world then to today where the head of the US House science committee chairman thinks the world is only 10,000 years old.

(edited a typo)

This is, in part, what Y Combinator hopes to accomplish through various arms.

Which arms out of curiosity?

Their accelerators, startup school, etc

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that Y Combinator works to help fund founders who have interesting startup ideas. This strikes me as materially different from funding pure research or, in some cases, gently guided research.

There's a branch of Y Combinator -- YC Research -- that has set up a number of non-profit R&D organizations

The Cold War and The Space Race were two causes of lots of government investment in R&D. We have neither today which is a cause of less funding for this type of research. Also, of course wars -- WW II saw development of Radar, nuclear technology, ...

Lots of integrated circuit funding for satellites, ICBM missile systems, etc.

Because of circumstances, Israel has been the leader in drone technology and a leader in water desalinization and drip irrigation and water reuse. But Israel is a small country the size and population the size of New Jersey. Only so much a country of 8 million can do.

If we had the mindset of Israel throughout the US imagine the amount of good R&D that would come out of it.

This embodies to me the qualitative difference between a manager and a leader. Or put another way, he's a 10X manager. Highly unfortunate that I cannot find any papers (much less books) authored by him that discuss how he learned and what he uses to continue to learn leadership. Would give an eyetooth to get his perspective on how he came up with and introduced the Dealer concept, or his equivalent of essays on management like Brooks' Mythical Man-Month.

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