>In a message of 7/22/99 4:39 PM from Brad De Long,
><mailto:delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU>
>
> >Yeah. But where are the profits going to come from? Profits from R&D
> >arise only if the R&D allows you to set up some very strong barriers
> >to entry behind which you can shelter. And I can't figure out what
> >those are going to be...
>
>Why does the profit or the value have to accrue to the original investor
>or developer (I mean for practical reasons, not just because they *want*
>it?) Knowledge is only valuable in relation to how widely it's broadcast.
>Widely broadcast, widely used and widely productive.
>
>There are no secrets in Silicon Valley, but there is an economy of
>setting up "some very strong barriers". That's counterproductive activity.
There are potentially broad social benefits to corporate R&D, but of course managements and shareholders want to keep as much inside the corporate walls as possible. With the shareholder revolution of the last 20 years, it seems virtually certain that activities of more general benefit have been cut back and only those R&D (emphasis on D, rather than R) activities that fatten the bottom line encouraged. No more Bell Labs - today it's the Mach3 razor.
Doug