1. Already found X highly motivated scientists and engineers.
- in my case people that must like chemicals, electronics, software, stuff like that
2. $1Mil funding x X but it's got to be paid back in 5 years so a viable business model needs to be initiated right away even if the technology is as much as a year out from possible release or commercialization.
- each person needs to be worth a million over 5 years, that's hard enough to find, it would be more of a needle in a haystack to find experimentalists where it's good to sink a million per year for a decent length of time, but that can be worked up to. If serious research is involved, stealth must be an option
3. Put them in X number of buildings.
- works better than you think, and "nobody's" doing it
4. Some of these are profit centers from day 1, so you could even put franchising on the table ;)
- you'd be surprised what people who've already invented a lifetime of stuff could do with the kind of resources that can enable a motivated creator who has yet to make very remarkable progress, so leverage both
If you're going to get to 4 easy steps and then outperform Bell Labs, you have to figure that first you need to negotiate a thousand-step process that's completely uncharted so you can come to terms about exactly what that kind of doom consists of in such a worst-case scenario. Without obliterating the slim chances for the kind of major breakthrough where the chances are already elusive under ideal conditions.
People aren't accustomed to this.
Conceptual advances here seem to always lag technology advances so this is where more massive room for improvement really exists.
There will probably always be those who "fail upward" and go forward with undue resources, at the same time as there will be earth-shaking solutions almost within reach that become unsupported prematurely, lost in the weeds with the bulk of truly unfeasibles.
Like betting on the wrong horse, you can lose everything :\
Bell labs was really fortunate to have money on every horse in the stable :)
For a small number X, odds would be best if every lab was the product of a highly motivated individual's million-dollar ambition, with their only previous obstacle a lack of resources. Not everybody promising is business-like to the same degree, and it can be worth the time for this to develop along with the technology because the idea is for them both to snowball. Most of the time I think there would be fairly early indications in the first few years if things were going to fall badly short of a million-dollar return by a strict deadline on a case-by-case basis.
I personally get way more accomplished without a deadline but it takes a lot of effort to get there, I would make sure to never rule it out though. If I was running things I would probably be a lot less strict than most.
1. Already found X highly motivated scientists and engineers.
- in my case people that must like chemicals, electronics, software, stuff like that
2. $1Mil funding x X but it's got to be paid back in 5 years so a viable business model needs to be initiated right away even if the technology is as much as a year out from possible release or commercialization.
- each person needs to be worth a million over 5 years, that's hard enough to find, it would be more of a needle in a haystack to find experimentalists where it's good to sink a million per year for a decent length of time, but that can be worked up to. If serious research is involved, stealth must be an option
3. Put them in X number of buildings.
- works better than you think, and "nobody's" doing it
4. Some of these are profit centers from day 1, so you could even put franchising on the table ;)
- you'd be surprised what people who've already invented a lifetime of stuff could do with the kind of resources that can enable a motivated creator who has yet to make very remarkable progress, so leverage both