Lee ZamparoIndustry researchers often need to push multiple short-term projects simultaneously, projects that will be swiftly ended if they don't look promising. This policy makes sense for companies, but an overlooked aspect of conducting research this way is that researchers become more dispassionate about their work. It's difficult as a researcher to commit your effort and explore an idea if you know it might be squashed next week. #Science #research #industry
I suspect a lot of really good ideas get left undeveloped, because they'll take six to twelve months to start showing real potential, and that's way more runway allotted to most industry projects.
Perhaps I'm too influenced by that ("Impact of research declines since the 1950s") paper which went around, but this morning I was consumed by the thought of how so much effort and money goes into developing "OK" ideas at the expense of really good ones. Anybody else have thoughts on this?