Quotes from Vint Cerf, the 'father of the Internet' saying stuff that
I often say:
". . . The venture companies were seriously burned by startups who
had ideas but no business model. They should be more careful about
what they fund.
On the other hand, I doubt very much that venture capital is willing
to take high stakes risks. Seed money, yes, but long-period,
high-level funding for risky work is not the normal province of
venture capital. That is one reason it is so important to provide for
serious, long-term, high-risk research and development funding from
various agencies of the U.S. and other governments.
I also think that it is worth looking at ways to extend research
results so they are closer to commercialization, since that's the
place where the venture world works. My rule of thumb is that if it
works in the lab, you are about 10 percent of the way to a product. . . ."
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/epicenter-qa-vi.html
Obviously, he thought of this stuff before I did! And he knows way
more about it than I do.
To some extent, his views are shaped by the fact that Uncle Sam was
paying his bills when he made his major contributions, at Stanford U
and DARPA. Along the same lines, most of the scientists and social
science researchers I have known (including my mother) were also paid
by the government. Most of the post-WWII fundamental breakthroughs in
physics, biology, social science, cold fusion and other areas that I
know about in depth were paid for by the government. Commercial
development was done by industry, obviously. This costs far more than
the fundamental research.
Capitalism plays a vital role in R&D, but for the past 60 years it
has been in the "D" phase only. Economic purists suggest that
research would go better if corporations did it. That may be true,
but corporations do not do it, so we can't tell. Given the
intellectual property laws and the fact that you cannot patent a
force of nature, it is hard to imagine how corporations could do
research and make any money off of it. It seems to be one of these
things that capitalism is not well suited to perform, like healthcare
and building highways.
- Jed
