Technology

60078 readers

4458 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

what are some ways to make R&D affordable? most of the time companies go bankrupt because development is expensive (self.technology)

submitted 2 days ago by Live_Let_Live to c/technology

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I would still say citation is needed. Of course if a company's R&D costs balloon large enough they will topple a company. Is that really what's happening in bankruptcies "most of the time"?

On its face that looks like an impossible claim because of the number of bankrupted companies that don't even have R&D.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 43 minutes ago) (1 children)

Isn't it the lack of R&D that kills companies? It's possible to have too much R&D, but that pretty much only applies to startups.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

What do you mean by "companies"? Tech companies? There's way more than that. Restaurants, insurance, real estate, farming, radio stations, schools, book publishing, auto parts dealer, grocery stores, nursing and medical home care, and on and on. What are they R&Ding that would drive them to bankruptcy?

I get the sense OP meant tech companies but didn't say that. That drastically changes their argument/question. It's still quite the claim. Massive amounts of R&D $ is fine so long as there's a way to get it back.

A big mismatch in R&D$ in and profit out is a problem that could lead to bankruptcy. But the $ spent on R&D isn't the root cause, the next "why" is the poor financial management and poor market research that led the company to make bad R&D investments.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 minutes ago

What are they R&Ding that would drive them to bankruptcy?

It's what they're not R&Ding that would cause them to not be competitive and thus go bankrupt:

Restaurants - new recipes to keep customers coming
insurance - mostly innovation in marketing and self-service
real estate - lower cost materials (for new construction), faster pairing of buyers to sellers, etc
farming - better yields (esp GMOs), efficient land and water use, storage, etc
radio stations - access to customers outside of radio frequencies (e.g. apps), constantly changing radio programs to differentiate from competitors, etc
schools - new teaching methods, adapt to new tech, etc
book publishing - marketing(also applies to video game publishing)
auto parts dealer - inventory and supply chain optimization, adjusting to changing markets (e.g. EVs), etc
grocery stores - supply chain, marketing, faster checkout, more customers per square foot
nursing and medical home care - nursing is always evolving, esp geriatric care

Pretty much every company needs to innovate or they'll get outcompeted, that's the way market economies work. The only companies that don't need to innovate are monopolies, and we generally oppose those because stagnation isn't good.