Is Research Overrated?
Posted by goodmind on December 4th, 2008
Today’s New York Times poses an interesting question: do we overrate basic research?
It’s a pretty loaded piece that takes on most of today’s favorite faux-controversial topics (Mr. Obama’s BlackBerry, the rise of China and India, America’s declining economy, and techno-nationalism). We almost didn’t make it through the entire article, when it seemed to suggest that as a nation, we ought to cut spending on research.
However, the reasoning behind this blasphemy is basically sound. According to Amar Bhidé, a professor at the Columbia Business School, the possibility for “midlevel innovation” is inevitably lost in the shuffle of a big research budget allocated from on high.
Midlevel innovation is defined as anything
…from a venture capitalist tweaking a business model to trim costs by a few percent to a technician fine-tuning his company’s business software to save a couple of data-entry steps in the accounting department.
It basically boils down to finding new ways of using existing technology, not spending big bucks to invent something totally new from scratch. It makes sense, and its something we’ve been helping clients do for a long time through research.
Most companies today need research in the first place, because they have previously relied on the latest technology to solve all of their business problems. Our task is to figure out how to help them use it efficiently, effectively, and profitably.
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