I considered the government question, because I think that as an institution they clearly can execute the long view, and I also agree that governments like China’s even seem to have the long view culturally ingrained. I don’t know what the answer is, but I am confident it has more than one component, because I can identify two from the American government research example.
The first is drawn from the history of PARC again: when JC Licklider was getting funding through ARPA (which built the community that eventually was transported almost wholesale to PARC) he broke from the traditional government funding model of short-term grants on a project basis by requesting long-term grants on a person basis. I think that if the old grant model was still in effect, even if everything else stayed the same, they would have been far less productive.
The second is the War on Cancer, which was a political event that heavily impacted the way funding worked across research in the United States. Normally increased resources are considered a good thing, but in this case it came with a bunch of process changes attached: namely researches had to be able to explain how cancer treatment would benefit before they got the funds. I expect that there is always some probability of a large external event like this disrupting the incentives, even if they were in excellent shape before.
To summarize, I think it is very hard for any institution to definitely not do what they would normally do, and then even if they succeed an unexpected change may be forced upon them anyway.
I considered the government question, because I think that as an institution they clearly can execute the long view, and I also agree that governments like China’s even seem to have the long view culturally ingrained. I don’t know what the answer is, but I am confident it has more than one component, because I can identify two from the American government research example.
The first is drawn from the history of PARC again: when JC Licklider was getting funding through ARPA (which built the community that eventually was transported almost wholesale to PARC) he broke from the traditional government funding model of short-term grants on a project basis by requesting long-term grants on a person basis. I think that if the old grant model was still in effect, even if everything else stayed the same, they would have been far less productive.
The second is the War on Cancer, which was a political event that heavily impacted the way funding worked across research in the United States. Normally increased resources are considered a good thing, but in this case it came with a bunch of process changes attached: namely researches had to be able to explain how cancer treatment would benefit before they got the funds. I expect that there is always some probability of a large external event like this disrupting the incentives, even if they were in excellent shape before.
To summarize, I think it is very hard for any institution to definitely not do what they would normally do, and then even if they succeed an unexpected change may be forced upon them anyway.