Slashdot Mirror
Reinventing Xerox PARC As a Money Maker
bonch writes "After a historical reputation for not monetizing breakthrough technologies (including the mouse and desktop GUI), Xerox PARC is now focused on making money from its inventions. CEO Anne Mulcahy vowed in 2001 to return the company to profitability, encouraging 'open innovation' and mandating that research turned a profit. The latest innovation is thin-film printed electronics, intended for a variety of products, from RFID readers to price labels."
.... where Xerox marketed the Xerox Alto as the first commercial GUI driven computer in 1973? I'm guessing technology would have advanced to todays levels by the early 90s, MIcrosoft most likely wouldn't exist as the IBM PC would never have been developed, at least not in its initial form, and even Apple would probably have faded away after managing to sell a few "old fashioned" Apple I & 2s in the mid 70s.
But - would the 8bit home computers have existed? If not then the huge 80s influx of hobbyists into programming would never have happened.
My thinking, too. Was it PARC's fault that Xerox did not follow-up on the inventions they created? Management was too busy thinking about making paper copies rather then looking ahead.
Kodak has been in the news, too, of late due to their financial issues. Perhaps when they were doing their ground-breaking work in digital imaging it didn't look like it could be a money maker - since their work predates ubiquitous PCs in every home. But once the PC revolution started to really take off in the late eighties and early nineties and the emergence of the World Wide Web they should have revisited their digital imaging decisions.
If the "captains of industry" in the US did more navigating by the stars and a little less dead-reckoning perhaps their firms would not be on the ropes.
The funding councils that back research at UK universities now require an 'impact' plan; evidence that what is being funded will have a 'positive' impact in terms of society and commercial interest. This was brought in by the previous government, and backed by the current one. At the time most researchers were set against it, pointing out that so many of the inventions and discoveries that have been so beneficial to us all came not from a will to research a specific issue, but from something else, and hence little more than an accident.
I thinks it's troubling that the idea of research for its own sake seems to be dying. In effect we're limiting the overall breadth of investigation, and perhaps that will result in fewer 'useful' discoveries after all.