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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday February 07 2016, @12:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-all-about-the-ROI dept.

Venture capitalists are not known for their long-range basic R&D vision. They look for high payout ventures and are quick to cut their losses if they don't see a fast return on their investment. Since 2014, Australia's premier research institution, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), has been headed by Larry Marshall. Marshall came to CSIRO after spending 25 years as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. When he took on his new post he looked to redirect the focus on "innovation".

Marshall says that while CSIRO has worked in partnership with small and large businesses in Australia he wants to take it to the next level by changing the mindset of an organisation that employs about 5000 people.

"One of the challenges with the CSIRO is that we are measuring everything by science excellence," he says.

[...] "So, when I look at Australia's innovation dilemma and I look at us measuring everything by science excellence and citations and publications, I think that is the wrong measure.

As part of that he announced that two areas that CSIRO is recognized internationally as experts, climate and ocean studies, are essentially being eliminated and positions being moved to support innovative areas. Marshall's reasoning for eliminating these groups:

We have spent probably a decade trying to answer the question "is the climate changing?" ... After [December's] Paris [climate summit] that question has been answered. The next question now is what do we do about it? The people that were so brilliant at measuring and modelling [climate change], they might not be the right people to figure out how to adapt to it.

Marshall sees similarities between Australia and Apple before Jobs was brought back and he feels that he needs to shake things up and "change the ecosystem". The scientific communities, both nationally and internationally, have been extremely critical of the decision with some pointing out that Marshall's reasoning is unwise simply because he is flat-out wrong. A major concern in the scientific community is that he is taking a premier scientific institution and instituting a Netflix style culture.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @01:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @01:10PM (#300171)

    So you got a Jobs wannabee, eh. These fuckers are dime a dozen.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 07 2016, @03:02PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday February 07 2016, @03:02PM (#300194)

    "science excellence" is too easy to BS and game the system.

    How about a tax system that rewards long term investment?

    If an investment yields an immediate yield tax that at the highest rate, I wouldn't be opposed to tax rates of 90% of gains on transactions that buy and then sell the same commodity within less than 1 second, drop that down to 50% by the time you've held the investment for a whole hour, and go for whatever the revenue neutral max tax rate is by the time the investment is held for at least 24 hours before liquidating.

    At the other end of the time scale, give immediate income deduction for R&D investments, and profits that point back to long term investments get additional tax relief. For instance, R&D investments could be "banked" and gain significant (10% annual?) interest as income deduction against their future profits. If you make an R&D investment of $1M that pays off (is claimed) in one year, that investment is $1M of income deduction in the current year, plus $100K of deduction against the future profits. At 2 years, the deduction would be $210K, 3 years $331K, etc. perhaps up to a maximum of $2M deduction in the far future.

    Right now, investments that don't pay off "right now" (within 3 months to 5 years) are mostly ignored.

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  • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:55PM

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:55PM (#300241)

    the problem is science is complicated. Those who practice science are often not interested in the banal investment practices of capitalist puppets. They might have huge egos and so want to be recognised, but not necessarily interested in "selling widgets". They will crawl over their dead pets to get grant money, just don't try and get them to produce anything - academics hate actually producing solutions to real problems.

    Therefore, those that would *like* to exploit science, often use the fog of words to hide true intent.

    That cold fusion bollocks for example. Some guy has magic box that makes energy that you can't look at.

    The thing is you can take "some guy" and insert any company and "magic box" is any technology you cannot test.

    To a certain degree the climate change industry has become a lightning conductor for polarised "for and against" groups. The sciences is what it is - burn a pile of fuel, you are going to change the environment.

    Then there is the artificial scarcity that every business exploits to maximise profit...

    Try talking to an investment manager to see just how clueless the money chasers are. It is why politics is so dysfunctional, the system rewards being a dogmatic mouthpiece, rather then a problem solving agent.

    /rant

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:49PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:49PM (#300312)

    I think when you get to a "Netflix-style culture revamp" you've already lost. The result looks like buzzword overload.

    "pick up more digital skills or move on as part of a sweeping cultural change driven"

    "pursue goals of being more innovative, more impactful and aligning more closely with industry"

    "we have stars in every position" - my teeth are like stars! (If you don't get the joke, it ends "they come out at night".)

    Anyhow, I'm not just making fun of them, but how do you translate this buzzword stuff into actual action items you can take as a low-ranking drone? Management spews out "the most important document ever to come out of the Valley" but can you directly turn this sort of stuff into a step-by-step process where your drones can be more innovative (or whatever)? Usually the answer is a big no. While you're trying to do this stuff, another startup has rendered you irrelevant.

    "It's always sad when people lose a job" - oh, come on, management does not care. Employees are rows on a spreadsheet to them.

    "there was a lack of digital skills" - so they're going to purge anyone with domain knowledge, and bring in .... ???

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