R&D's New Face  Is R&D going down the tubes in the U.S.?
Pundits have taken to bemoaning a retreat by U.S. industry from
basic research. And indeed, it's easy to find research labs
whose glory days have come and gone -- Bell Labs comes to mind.
But consider this: IBM, Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.
collectively spend $17 billion annually on research and
development.  That's right: $17 billion.  While much of that is
for product development, hundreds of millions flow into areas
like computational biology and nanotechnology, which may take
years to bear fruit, if they ever do.  It's significant that all
three companies have recently seen major changes like these in
their research labs:  &#8226; In July 2007, IBM named a new
research director and announced plans to invest more than $100
million in each of four long-term research projects.  &#8226; A
month later, HP brought in a new research director and launched
a strategy based on five mega-areas of IT research.  &#8226; And
this year, Microsoft annou