Research lab to Market vs. Product Reverse Engineering...

This is a very interesting question and a difficult one too. Still I will attempt to answer...

Business ideas are usually generated by observers close to the customer; where they sense an unfulfilled need and create a business to address the gap. It may still lead to sizable business, but I think it is generally not associated with major technological breakthroughs.

Most of academic research (at least historically) was not business oriented. The researchers worked just to feel the joy of discovery / invention. However increasingly the research is becoming directed (try to solve a business problem). The implications are interesting... We no longer see many fundamental breakthroughs in basic sciences. For example compare the 1900-1950 period with 1950-2000; you will find that the second part of the century is full of technology breakthroughs and very few fundamental breakthroughs.

Overall, I no longer see the scientists who will spend 25 years of their life to make a fundamental breakthrough.

Basic Lab research to market vs. reverse engineering is a question of ethics at an individual level and a separate issue of business strategy. From lab to market could give you a first mover advantage while reverse engineering will give you lower costs and avoid many mistakes the first mover makes. There are cases in favour of both, so I guess the context plays an important role... I think it is more of an execution issue...

Google turns VC

A recent article in BusinessWeek details out this new initiative from Google and they seem to be using the available cash to fund startups at an early stage and buying out many of them at a later stage. At the minimum it increases options for the aspiring entrepreneurs...

Basic Sciences vs. Engineering

As I have pointed out earlier the attitude towards and trends in basic sciences are a matter of concern. In this post I will reflect more on this topic.

Starting from 50's till about early 80's the talent was equally distributed between basic sciences and engineering, primarily due to lack of opportunities and a huge demand supply gap. Many of the scholars ended up choosing teaching as a profession, still managing to maintain the educational ecosystem to a large degree. By the time I decided to go to college (in early 80's), a BS in basic sciences / maths was accompanied with a tag of failure. It was a common perception that all bright students got admission in engineering ! I think this is where things start to go wrong...

By 1990's, the government had largely liberalized the "ecosystem of technical education". Many options opened up for students, virtually squeezing majority (I would not say all, because few people remained by choice OR ignorance) of the good talent out of the basic science streams.

The rest of it is only hypothesis, without any concrete data, but it is also the most probable scenario in future. I think this is how our future will look like :

• Increasing financial returns, disproportionate to the individual ability will erode the value of education (happened in most of the societies, where high growth created large opportunities). Since opportunities are abundant, students will have lesser incentive to learn...
  
• Also, given the current incentive levels of an average teacher, education no longer looks an exciting career option.
• So we are likely to enter into a negative spiral where falling education standards and an indifferent teaching staff will reinforce each other; eroding our long term competitiveness.

There is another important relationship, which needs to be understood. All technologies / systems go through a continuous improvement process till they become commodity. This phase is usually driven by engineering, but the major disruption comes from fundamental breakthrough in sciences. This implies that excellence in science is essential for making big leaps in competitiveness.

What is the way out ? There are no easy answers in a country with billion people and hence any radical change at the ground level requires huge investment. But many of us can start to change things around us. Even if each one of us can influence 10 others in the community / close relatives, it would make a huge difference...