> No one is quite sure why the lab model failed. It’s obvious that a scenario where Xerox is paying scientists to do research that ultimately mostly benefits ot

> No one is quite sure why the lab model failed. It’s obvious that a scenario where Xerox is paying scientists to do research that ultimately mostly benefits other firms, potentially even competitors that help to put it out of business, could never survive. I don't agree with this. The lab companies had gotten really good at attracting some of the smartest people (in academia and elsewhere), designing models to motivate them to invent while giving them tremendous latitude, and then profiting from their discoveries. See people like Wallace Carothers[1], a chemist that DuPont hired out of Harvard and let him run a lab. He ended up inventing nylon which was obviously tremendously profitable for DuPont. So the model did work. I don't have data for this, but I think what actually happened was just a lot more short-termism as investors, companies, and executives focused more and more on short-term profits, so large recurring R&D expenses that might require longer horizons to recoup investments made less sense. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Carothers#Move_to_DuPont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Carothers#Move_to_DuPo...