Slashdot Mirror
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."
suggests the Microsoft table is a vast step forward. Hardly!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
that a number of char. system said that the new fangled gui system was a passing fad. And then a guy from silicon valley got a free pass to see it at Xerox. Later,these guys passed it on to a small company who was doing compilers for them. From redmond. There, the small company was given ALL sorts of insider info. And what was not given, was flat out stolen. And it all became a vast step forward.
Ms said that the table was a vast step forward. They did not say that they developed it. Just that they are going to build them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There's really no surprise here... if a lab doesn't spin off something valuable or at least has something big in the pipes that could be marketable in a a few years - cut your losses and shut them down.
Coming up with a table computer is really not cutting edge - even before Microsoft stole the idea.
Including this.
And this and this.
And this.
This article is a CLASSIC example of why we need academic institutions and government funded research into the great unknown.
A significant number of these types of labs, doing pioneering work under the name of a parent company, have been gutted with the intent of making them more "product focused" with the intent of converting brain power straight into $$$.
Well, here's a news flash - that's not how real research (as opposed to product development) works. With research into new stuff, you DON'T KNOW what you will find or what it will be worth. NO ONE does, BY DEFINITION.
A corporation can only do this type of work when a) they have a decades long focus and b) have sufficient profit margins to soak up the cost of research without immediate returns. That's a rare situation, and it's becoming rarer in a more competitive world economy.
Rather than bemoan this behavior (after all, money making is at the heart of commerce) we should be funding basic research at universities at much higher levels. Funding at universities has gotten tough enough that they will undertake a wide variety of investigations for commercial companies just to pay the bills. This makes them de-facto corporate research labs, and takes away time from their exploration into the unknown. Grad students become extremely cheap labor for companies, just indirectly.
Right now, it won't matter commercially. Product cycles don't get impacted by long term research for years or decades, so for a while we won't see this problem. But it's going to hurt us in the end. As products stagnate, foreign plants will catch up and learn how to produce at higher quality. They will begin to match or even exceed the performance of existing outputs domestically, and we will not be able to compete because there will be nothing in the long term pipeline that might convince people to stay with us.
Pure Research HAS A POINT. Even if the profound social and philosophical questions surrounding the pursuit of knowledge for its own stake don't register, it can also be viewed as a long term investment in our future. Balance sheets and profit statements do not define the whole of human existence, nor do the look far enough ahead to see long term consequences.
Again, it is unrealistic to expect this of businesses - that is not how the system is encouraged to behave. However, the government SHOULD be thinking about these issues. They need to be funding a LOT of basic research into all manner of alternative energy science, and the more basic science behind it - and thats actually a more practically centered goal. Truly BASIC research into the unknown, with no end game in mind, seems to be a tough sell nowadays.
Corporate research works ONLY when the long term is viewed as Very Important. It's dangerous to trust to that in an uncertain amd extremely competitive market.
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.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
In the USA, the only industrial laboratory that still does significant pure research is Microsoft Research. It enjoys an annual funding of about $7 billion, a level that can be provided by only a monopoly.
In Japan, the only industrial laboratory that does signficant pure research is NTT Laboratory.
The management of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation acted appropriately in shutting down the pure-research arm of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL). Although MERL is part of the huge Mitsubishi conglomerate, it is not a monopoly in any industry and cannot afford pure research.
I am sure that Mitsubishi Bank, Mitsubishi Agricultural Machinery, Mitsubishi Estate Co., Mitsubishi Plastics, Mitsubishi Electric, &ct. would disagree with your "Core Competencies" analysis. The core product in the Mitsubishi brand is not cars or electronics. Their core product has always been venture research. Be the first and best in new fields. If anything, I am surprised they don't have a Mitsubishi Pharmaceutical yet.
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.
There is a huge problem in the automotive embedded software industry having to do with reliability and productivity. I think a streamlined Merl has an opportunity to do extremely well in this area if they put their minds to it. I understand Mitsubishi is a member of JASPAR, the Japanese consortium funded by the likes of Toyota, Nissan and Honda. They recently announced the funding of a new automotive OS. Merl should focus on this more than anything else, IMO. Any breakthrough in this area is bound to spill over into other areas of computing and bring lots of profit with it.
Japan is different than America - there, even though they share the same name, the affiliation is much looser than you might think. Thus the core product of the Mitsubishi brand is Mitsubishi brand itself - and each of the affiliated companies has it's *own* core competency.
> according to Marks, who spoke with Xconomy at length Monday night.
So, TFA was written on the basis of a lengthy evening tirade by a disgruntled former employee. To their credit, they also interviewed the current CEO, who presented the alternate point of view -- that there was a gradual reorg in pursuit of a better ROI for the parent company.
I fail to see how this equates to "Mitsubishi breaks up MERL." MERL continues to exist. In fact it's a disservice to the newly hired researchers to assume that the "new" MERL can only be a shadow of its former self. Sometimes new people and fresh ideas are a good thing.
There is also a snide element of bias in the article against the "Japanese-style management" -- assumed to be something so horrible that researchers need to be "shielded" from it. While frustrating for some folks who can't bridge the cultural gap, this maligned "Japanese management style" is the same one that brought us innovations we take for granted today, in areas like automotive quality, 3G/4G cellular, the Wii user interface, CCDs and LCDs, and of course hentai anime.
In any case the news itself is interesting, but I'm not sure there is any need to portray it as the end of the world or something...
Even though the US forceably broke up the Zaibutsu after the war, the affiliations are still strong (Keiretsu). The reason Mitsubishi Bank (now Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi after they merged with Tokyo Citybank) is one of the worlds largest banks is that all the Mitsubishi companies still do all their banking there.
They do.