Comment by bluGill
6 months ago
Every breakthrough needs many 'man years' of effort to bring to market. research is good but for every researcher we need several thousand who are doing all the hard work of getting the useful things to market in volumn.
Speaking of which https://substack.com/home/post/p-115930233 :
> John Pierce once said in an interview, asserting the massive importance of development at Bell:
>> You see, out of fourteen people in the Bell Laboratories…only one is in the Research Department, and that’s because pursuing an idea takes, I presume, fourteen times as much effort as having it.
It gets even more nuanced. As I understand it, Pierce was not great at the pursuing part and often managed to enthuse others to follow his ideas instead of doing it himself. So maybe it is only natural that someone like Pierce would notice how much effort it takes to follow up.