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What is the recipe? — (You have written a lot of words, no recipe.) Honestly, love research, would be happy to be wrong, but all I hear you saying is someone d

by billme 6y ago

What is the recipe? — (You have written a lot of words, no recipe.) Honestly, love research, would be happy to be wrong, but all I hear you saying is someone did it so it must be possible— that’s called survivor bias, it’s not a recipe and it would not double the global output of R&D for the next 10-1000 years.

wegs 6y ago
There isn't a simple recipe someone can follow. A recipe is what brings you up to "industry best practices," and about where a typical business might perform. Excellence requires focus, dedication, thinking things through from first principles, having the right people in place, etc. The closest I can offer to a recipe is to hire a CEO / President / co-founder early on who has a track record of having R&D successes in former positions, who has a great depth of knowledge, who thinks deeply, and have them focus the organization on R&D, and to do this before the culture is set. Of course, that's not always a winning strategy. If you do that, that same person is unlikely to have that same depth in, for example, customer engagement, negotiations, or legal. Most hard things don't have recipes ("What's the recipe for an effective fighter jet?"). If they did have simple recipes, they usually wouldn't be hard. But that doesn't make them impossible (we have a whole fleet of effective fighter jets).
- billme 6y ago
  To be direct: you literally failed to acknowledge my core point in response to your prior comment, that is what you’re describing is “survivor bias” — then went on in the comment I am currently responding to say a recipe is to fund, hire, cofounder, etc - the survivors. Recipe you provided was still based on survivor bias, at best an optimization based strategy — and would never double the output globally of R&D for any meaningful amount of time.
  - wegs 6y ago
    To be direct: You made a nonsense statement, and now your changing your claims. Your statement was: "anyone that tells you they are able to outperform the market at scale as it relates to R&D outcomes is lying." This is a false statement. Your question was never about doubling global output of R&D. That's not a point one can even argue meaningfully; there's no way to offer more than an opinion there. Your question was about being "able to outperform the market at scale." It was nonsense. Plenty of people and organizations can and do outperform the market, consistently, over many decades. That's not a survivorship bias, any more than weightlifters beating the general population at lifting weights is survivorship bias, or that Stanford CS majors have stronger technical skills than the general market is survivorship bias. It's a counterexample. Survivorship bias would be there if these were one-offs (company or individual makes ONE breakthrough, at random). I'm signing off this thread. This is dumb.

by billme 6y ago

wegs 6y ago

There isn't a simple recipe someone can follow. A recipe is what brings you up to "industry best practices," and about where a typical business might perform. Excellence requires focus, dedication, thinking things through from first principles, having the right people in place, etc. The closest I can offer to a recipe is to hire a CEO / President / co-founder early on who has a track record of having R&D successes in former positions, who has a great depth of knowledge, who thinks deeply, and have them focus the organization on R&D, and to do this before the culture is set. Of course, that's not always a winning strategy. If you do that, that same person is unlikely to have that same depth in, for example, customer engagement, negotiations, or legal. Most hard things don't have recipes ("What's the recipe for an effective fighter jet?"). If they did have simple recipes, they usually wouldn't be hard. But that doesn't make them impossible (we have a whole fleet of effective fighter jets).

billme 6y ago
To be direct: you literally failed to acknowledge my core point in response to your prior comment, that is what you’re describing is “survivor bias” — then went on in the comment I am currently responding to say a recipe is to fund, hire, cofounder, etc - the survivors. Recipe you provided was still based on survivor bias, at best an optimization based strategy — and would never double the output globally of R&D for any meaningful amount of time.
- wegs 6y ago
  To be direct: You made a nonsense statement, and now your changing your claims. Your statement was: "anyone that tells you they are able to outperform the market at scale as it relates to R&D outcomes is lying." This is a false statement. Your question was never about doubling global output of R&D. That's not a point one can even argue meaningfully; there's no way to offer more than an opinion there. Your question was about being "able to outperform the market at scale." It was nonsense. Plenty of people and organizations can and do outperform the market, consistently, over many decades. That's not a survivorship bias, any more than weightlifters beating the general population at lifting weights is survivorship bias, or that Stanford CS majors have stronger technical skills than the general market is survivorship bias. It's a counterexample. Survivorship bias would be there if these were one-offs (company or individual makes ONE breakthrough, at random). I'm signing off this thread. This is dumb.