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Reinventing Xerox PARC As a Money Maker

Posted by timothy on from the with-a-method-or-mechanism-for-shaking-it dept.

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."

4 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Is that really their job? by CaptainLard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is it a researcher's job to make a profit? The point of research is to learn something new, whether it works or not. Then its up to the business side to decide what to do with it. Perhaps instead of mandating that PARC must make money, the management should mandate they make smarter decisions on which inventions are marketable or not instead of giving away the mouse and GUI. Hows that 11 year old quest to return to profitability going?

    1. Re:Is that really their job? by captbob2002 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Re:Yay! by mr1911 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Another corporation similar to Rambus which invents stuff and then demands royalties for licenses and patents.

    Not at all. PARC invents things and then licenses their inventions to those that would like to commercialize them. Rambus patented something they managed to get written into a JEDEC specification.

    You are free to choose whether or not you use PARCs IP. Rambus tried to make it impossible to conform to an industry specification without infringing on their IP.

    One is a business, one is a troll. If you can't tell the difference, then too bad for you.

    --
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    Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
  3. Research for its own sake is disappearing... by splodus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.