When I was in graduate school in consumer science and math, all of the big companies had labs, all doing blue sky research.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As an accountant by trade, my work for blue chip companies took me all over the world.
I literally worked at research labs where the staff really tried to steer management away from the modern technology that was actually better.
It used to be that the only ones with access to cutting-edge technology were top government labs, big companies and the ultra-rich. It was simply too expensive for the rest of us to afford.
I found that my career at Bell Telephone Labs thrived because of the environment, which encouraged cooperative research, offered opportunities for access to sophisticated equipment, and fellowship.
I spend a year at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, researching market approaches to air pollution control.
In the 19th century, if you had a basement lab, you could make major scientific discoveries in your own home. Right? Because there was all this science just lying around waiting for somebody to pick it up.
You looked at Stanford or Harvard, or the University of Colorado, these were powerful engines just turning out people ready to create and grow businesses.
At Harvard, I worked for some time as a researcher in a lab for computer graphics and spatial analysis, which is one of the birthplaces for what we do.
Most of the great businesses of our time have experimented. Like Google.
Well, I got to have a project. I'm not a blue-sky guy at all. I'd never let anybody like me loose in a company.