4 ms·

This is a big strategic question. Do you want researchers closer to the market, paid by the person whose P&L they could impact? Or further away, so they can t

This is a big strategic question. Do you want researchers closer to the market, paid by the person whose P&L they could impact? Or further away, so they can think longer term? Other companies go through this a lot. Procter & Gamble used to have centralized research. To improve time to market, they decentralized research, and had them report to business unit heads. This was great for singles, but when they wanted more home runs and cross-category innovation, they decentralized again. One can look at Xerox PARC as the penultimate example of the dangers of isolated innovation labs. They created the technology that everyone else monetized. AT&T struggled with this somewhat too.

dwc 13y ago
Xerox PARC was not dangerous. The danger for Xerox was the different between seeing an opportunity for the future or a threat to their current business model. If PARC had never existed, the same things with minor differences would have happened some years later.
- Retric 13y ago
  The danger was not the invention it was wasting money without realizing the benefits.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    Exactly. They invested in a future that other realized instead of them. Would it have happened anyways? Who knows, probably. Who was harmed? Their shareholders, and all the employees who eventually lost their jobs.
shas3 13y ago
Centralized research labs give researchers the opportunity to look at different ideas across the company and connect ideas. This is almost impossible if all researchers are siloed in decentralized research groups. Also, there's 'why can't we have both?'. In honesty, Google, like most tech companies today follows a hybrid model. The public statements of executives are not to be taken as gospel, because their primary audience are the company's shareholders. In reality, you have PhDs in Google X working on moon-shot problems (product focused or otherwise, they are long-term projects) as well as in direct P&L divisions. Centralized research labs also have their own versions of P&L metrics (e.g. number of papers published, product $s resulting indirectly from research, number of patents, etc.). Financially, centralized research labs working on moon-shot problems are a hedge against short term fluctuations and gives companies an opportunity to pursue long-term trends. Also, in companies that have both, there is nothing to prevent researchers from moving between centralized research labs and decentralized when opportunities present themselves (e.g. product commercialization/scale-up project resulting from research). I think it is dogmatic to pursue centralized or decentarlized exclusively.

dwc 13y ago

Xerox PARC was not dangerous. The danger for Xerox was the different between seeing an opportunity for the future or a threat to their current business model. If PARC had never existed, the same things with minor differences would have happened some years later.

Retric 13y ago
The danger was not the invention it was wasting money without realizing the benefits.
- mathattack 13y ago
  Exactly. They invested in a future that other realized instead of them. Would it have happened anyways? Who knows, probably. Who was harmed? Their shareholders, and all the employees who eventually lost their jobs.

shas3 13y ago

Centralized research labs give researchers the opportunity to look at different ideas across the company and connect ideas. This is almost impossible if all researchers are siloed in decentralized research groups. Also, there's 'why can't we have both?'. In honesty, Google, like most tech companies today follows a hybrid model. The public statements of executives are not to be taken as gospel, because their primary audience are the company's shareholders. In reality, you have PhDs in Google X working on moon-shot problems (product focused or otherwise, they are long-term projects) as well as in direct P&L divisions. Centralized research labs also have their own versions of P&L metrics (e.g. number of papers published, product $s resulting indirectly from research, number of patents, etc.). Financially, centralized research labs working on moon-shot problems are a hedge against short term fluctuations and gives companies an opportunity to pursue long-term trends. Also, in companies that have both, there is nothing to prevent researchers from moving between centralized research labs and decentralized when opportunities present themselves (e.g. product commercialization/scale-up project resulting from research). I think it is dogmatic to pursue centralized or decentarlized exclusively.