No Revival for the Industrial Research Lab

One thing this got me thinking about is what industries would benefit from more industrial research labs. It seems like some of the major technological challenges for the future are more political/social than technical. We need better transportation systems, better energy distribution, and some sort of change in the healthcare system, but the technology for most of these changes probably already exists.

The two areas that probably still have a lot of room for technological breakthroughs, microbiology and renewable energy technology, seem to have a healthy level of research going on, including in industrial labs associated with those industries.