For-Profit Research and Development Program

References

(Wikipedia, 2018) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_and_development#Business_R Retrieved:2018-3-5.
- Research and development are very difficult to manage, since the defining feature of research is that the researchers do not know in advance exactly how to accomplish the desired result. As a result, "higher R&D spending does not guarantee more creativity, higher profit or a greater market share". Research is the most risky financing area because both the development of an invention and its successful realization carries uncertainty including the profitability of the invention. One way entrepreneurs can reduce these uncertainties is to buy the licence for a franchise, so that the know-how is already incorporated in the licence.

https://www.economist.com/news/business/21732125-tech-giants-are-investing-billions-transformative-technology-google-leads-race
- QUOTE: Companies have different philosophies about how to deal with staff. Some, such as Microsoft and IBM, invest heavily in AI research and publish a large number of papers (see chart 2), but do not require researchers to apply their findings to money-making activities. At the opposite end of the scale are Apple and Amazon, which do not have enormous research initiatives, expect all work to feed into products and are tight-lipped about their work. Google and Facebook are somewhere in between on whether researchers must toil only on money-making ventures.