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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

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours 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 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

If we're going to call those R&D (which I have a difficult time calling marketing that but fine for sake of moving discussion further), we loop back to cause of bankruptcy. If a restaurant goes bankrupt from sinking too much $ into developing new recipes, or an insurance company on too much marketing, that's not a cost of R&D problem, that's a mismanagement problem.

So to OPs question of how to make R&D affordable, the answer is to not make stupid investments in excessive R&D that is poorly understood for how likely it is to return the investment. Study the market, identify and mitigate the risks, manage a budget, don't get caught up in the VC tech bubble mindset of "innovate or die" because that is a catchphrase and not an actual business management technique.

Are we getting off track? I think so. My initial point to OP was 1) I don't believe most bankruptcies are caused by R&D investments. And if I'm wrong on that point and it really is as OP says 2) some really stupid business people need to learn not to take so many big risks that they can't survive when the risks materialize.