tl;dr: Every time this comes up I wish the writer would start with a personal "taxonomy of big problems" to better frame the discussion. At very least, I wish

tl;dr: Every time this comes up I wish the writer would start with a personal "taxonomy of big problems" to better frame the discussion. At very least, I wish these writers would preface with a few examples of what kind of "big problem" they think corporate R&D should be working on, but isn't. OP's example falls flat to me: > Private businesses seem remarkably uninterested in tackling serious problems such as energy despite soaring prices and evident problems. They may not be interested in solving energy problems in the way OP wants them to, but there is certainly massive industry R&D in the energy space (Siemens and Schlumberger come to mind, many others). Just look at the ever-increasing yields from fracking and (ever deeper) deep-sea drilling. That requires huge R&D investments (down-bore sonar and NMR, anyone?) If you consider the sorts of problems that are presently somewhat tractable modulo engineering {to pick a few: energy, cancer, food, genetics} I would argue that there is probably a lot more industry R&D work than the author realizes. It may not happen in the software industry, but realistically, for many "big problems", software is auxiliary at-best. If you are considering the sorts of problems that are presently only tractable modulo magic {fusion, life extension, interstellar travel} then of course corporate R&D is not working on those.