A new relationship

摘要

The standard of living in Western Europe and the United States has been sustained for several decades by new products, services and businesses, the result of leading-edge research and development (R&D). Nevertheless, competitive cost cutting has forced the elimination of all but the shortest-term private-sector R&D programmes. Major corporate laboratories, once remarkable catalysts for economic development, have all but vanished. RCA Laboratories, for example, no longer exists. Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, once the foremost corporate research laboratory in the world, saw its budget reduced from US$3 billion in 1982 to $1.3 billion in 2005 (actual dollars not adjusted for inflation).