To me this is a perfect example of how to exploit the "talent". It might have been caring out in sectors such as computer chip design/manufacture, software coding, biological science, and recently, biotech and pharmaceutical industries.
The migration of top talents away from basic and applied research to I-bank or the like in the last decade led to the innovation shortfall, which is not only real but may also contributed to the crisis we are in today. The culprit is the eagerness of Wall Street to commercialize novel technologies prematurely in order to generate quick returns on their investment by bubble up one market sensation after another.
To be successful, a company has to beat the EXPECTATION of Wall Street every quarter other face the music when the stock price falls over the cliff. How many breakthroughs can be accomplished in a span of three months? Not even Harry Porter could grow from a magic protégée to an accomplished wizard within a quarter. Why should we force a fledging company or technology to follow the same path of quick bucks?
To put it in the scientific terms, most low-hanging fruits in technology have been discovered and explored. The next breakthrough would require enormous money, time, talents, and luck to materialize and commercialize. An investor who picks the winner among startup companies simply based on who will the first to break even is no different from a person who throws out the baby with the bathwater. Patience is a virtue! But we all want something as fast as the internet!
When we think about innovation in the last decade, the names popping out are Google, Facebook, Apple, or Nintendo. They define the darling of Wall Street. However, no industrial revolution in human history was based on a single technology. If we go after a sustainable economic growth, we need innovative breakthroughs on top of the IT industry. Putting information at your fingertip anywhere and everywhere is nice to have. But how to use this overwhelming information to polish and produce REAL products in other sectors is the real bottleneck.
We have to think outside the box. The old way of running R&D research is outdated in the 21st century. We need to break the traditional barrier and apply the power of cloud computing or the social network to bring out the best among the hardworking scientists. And when we do that, we need to reward those diligent, beautiful minds with compensation commensurate with their contribution and sacrifice. Starving in a cage is not the right way to bring out the best performance from a scientist. It might force him or her to cheat or steal!
One muggle