From: laws@ai.sri.com (Kenneth I. Laws)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers
Subject: Re: Other attacks on research (Was: Re: The Cold War: a Golden Age...)e
Date: 5 Oct 92 01:02:47 GMT
	<1992Sep29.113617.9095@vax.oxford.ac.uk> <7153@tekig7.PEN.TEK.COM>
	<1992Oct2.145317.7661@aio.jsc.nasa.gov>
Organization: Computists International
In-reply-to: lafave@ial4.jsc.nasa.gov's message of 2 Oct 92 14:53:17 GMT

> From Norman LaFave:
> Hitachi is displaying attributes which are sorely lacking in American
> Industry today--- foresight and a pioneering spirit. American corporations
> have forgotten that it was these attributes which made them prosper in the
> first place. We are now prisoners of the "bean counters" and the quarterly
> rept, fat, dumb, and declining. If we don't wake up pretty soon our future
> looks pretty bleak.

Hitachi's research is indeed exemplary.  I don't believe that we should
push our U.S. corporations to imitate Hitachi, however.  We should instead
push Congress to help small businesses (with tax incentives, loan programs,
health care, etc.) and individual entrepreneurs (with patent protection,
commercial Internet services, expansion of low-end SBA programs, etc.)
instead of listening to self-serving lobbyists from the Fortune 500.

Bureaucracy is an efficient management structure for "assembly line"
manufacturing, service, and knowledge work.  Once the research has
been done and the market established, it is inevitable that a
bureaucracy will be able to provide service to the masses at the
least cost.  (Two or three competitors can help to ensure that
efficiency is maintained.)  At this stage, very little creativity
is required.  The corporation becomes a self-sustaining economic
engine, and should be taxed as heavily as possible to channel its
excess profit into social causes and creation of new services.

Bureaucracy is not a good management structure for creative
endeavors.  It is therefore counterproductive for government to
encourage research within the Fortune 500 envelope.  The Fortune
500 (or 1000) can afford the research that they need, or can
acquire results that become available from outside.  These
corporations do not need government help.  It is the startup
companies that need help -- often a very small amount of
help, with potentially great payoff for the U.S. economy.

Much the same argument applies to academic research labs.
Directors of large labs have disproportionate influence
at NSF and elsewhere in the government.  Certainly pockets
of excellence should be supported, but it is counterproductive
to limit all support of a field to a single geographic
location and bureaucratic approval system.  We must support
networks of researchers, and do it with enough supervision
and coherence that critical mass is maintained despite spreading
the support thinly.  NSF was originally designed to "lubricate"
worthy projects that could otherwise not be tried.  It was to
provide very small amounts of funding, perhaps for a needed
analytical instrument.  It was not foreseen that NSF would
be looked to for 100% of academic research support (for some
professors, and 0% for others).  We have worked ourselves into
a state where NSF as we know it is the problem rather than the
solution.  We must wean universities from dependence on
government research funding, and steer them toward corporate
support, entrepreneurial ventures, and royalties from intellectual
properties.  Theoretical research with no sponsorship should
be supported by the universities themselves (if they wish) --
as was the case before government patronage was available.

					-- Ken
--

Dr. Kenneth I. Laws, (415) 493-7390, laws@ai.sri.com.
Moderator of the Computists International AI/IS/CS mutual-aid association.
Ask about my weekly online career newsletter, The Computists' Communique.