If I were the head of a large high technology corporation, I’d be looking at the bottom line. And the bottom line ultimately rests on I.P. What do I own that my competitors do not?
That doesn’t give me a lot of room to fool around. If I direct my resources to focus on initiatives that won’t come to market for another twenty years, I am essentially dissipating my advantage.
In particular, if our company applies for patent protection on those initiatives, we are essentially just giving away valuable know-how to future competitors, since the patent will expire around the time anybody will benefit. It’s not a very good strategy.
On the other hand, if I am a young researcher at a University, I am not in a position to capitalize on technological innovation in any large scale way. The most important resource I have is complete freedom to pursue directions that others are not yet pursuing.
I probably won’t be rewarded for those pursuits with vast riches. But I will probably be rewarded by a life of complete intellectual freedom, as well as the steady financial support of large corporations that know full well the value proposition at work: If they keep lines of communication open with people like me — and with my students — then they will have an insight into what might lie just beyond the commercial horizon, and they can start preparing for whatever that may be.
When you zoom into a Google map, you are using my algorithms. When you play Minecraft or Diablo III or Worlds of Warcraft, you are using my algorithms. When you see a Science fiction movie, or an animation by Dreamworks or the Walt Disney company, you are seeing my algorithms at work.
In all these cases, you are mostly seeing the benefits of initiatives that I and people like me started long ago. And for the most part, we are no longer working on those things. We are busy working on things that you will benefit from in another fifteen or twenty years.
While it is understandable that Vasco wouldn’t know all this, it is very helpful that large corporations are keenly aware of it. And those corporations make sure that our University research labs get the funding we need to keep doing whatever we think needs to be done next.
They never tell us what to work on. But they are always extremely interested to see what it might be.
You know, the use of your algorithms in Minecraft is how I found out you exist. Then, later on, I found your blog 🙂