Mitsubishi Breaks Up Famous Computer Science Lab

Andrew Koyfman writes "Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories is falling apart. Top researchers and scientists are being poached by the competitors, including BAE, Adobe, and others. The lab was responsible for much breakthrough research in the areas of computer vision, computer graphics, AI, and machine learning. They were the first group to develop the Diamond Touch table, an early precursor to Microsoft's Surface Computing. Now it looks like the famous lab will be no more, at least not in their original glory."

Comments

All of your examples show why they were shut down

[Nova Express]

None of the examples you list were ever brought to market as or part of a Mitsubishi product. Moreover, they seem to be doing a lot of deep computer work for a company that is little known today for computers, but rather their automotive and consumer electronics divisions.

In an era when Nintindo has passed Sony in market cap, it pays to focus your research efforts on areas relevant to your core competencies rather than blue-sky research into market segments where your presence is negligable.

Hell, even the classic example of Xerox PARC is one of a brilliant organization whose parent company was woefully unable to commoditize the ideas there (their GUI licensing deal in exchange for Apple stock is among their few commercial successes).

Publically held corporations exist to make stockholders money, not to do research "because it's cool." Period.

Re:Only Monopolies can Afford Pure Research

[mOdQuArK!]

There's a decent economic argument to made that it is in society's best interest to use public monies to fund pure research, and then allow the fruits of such research to be released into the public domain for any entrepreneurs to take it to a usable form. It spreads the large and long-term financial risks of such research over the entire society, but lets capitalistic forces figure out the most efficient way to make practical uses of the research available to the society.