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A few big companies have done expensive basic research without direct market value: AT&T, IBM, Xerox, Google to some degree. All of them were (quasi-) monopolis
by bewo001 9y ago
A few big companies have done expensive basic research without direct market value: AT&T, IBM, Xerox, Google to some degree. All of them were (quasi-) monopolists when they did that.
- acdha 9y agoI think that example is also interesting: other than Google, they did that when they had lucrative monopolies but it was also when executive compensation rates were much, much lower and the stock market wasn't as heavily focused on share price growth. I think there's a potentially valid argument that those factors combined to encourage more long-term planning than we've seen since the 1980s.