Bill Buxton on Basic Research
Bill Buxton (Microsoft Research) has a nice opinion piece in the current issue of BusinessWeek entitled, “The Price of Forgoing Basic Research“. He argues forcefully for greater investment in basic research, explaining that “the return on investment goes down as the R&D budget shifts from basic to applied research”. Besides the problem of corporations abandoning basic research, Buxton also charges that “academia has apparently been only too happy to make a Faustian bargain to redirect priorities towards the shorter-term objectives of industry”.
Well worth reading.
Peter Lee @ December 18, 2008