It's certainly not a new question. In fact, in a report issued earlier this year, senior analysts with the Battelle Institute point to the shift away from basic research to applied research in industry-based R&D organizations as a real threat to innovation. As reported in a related article on the subject, Battelle president and CEO Carl Kohrt offered this view: "R&D practices have been reduced to a commoditization of existing knowledge and technology through global collaboration."

As a former chief technology officer with Kodak, Kohrt suggests that established multinationals — like Kodak — have a tendency because of their business models to spend more resources on innovative extensions of existing product lines, rather than on truly new and innovative products. Kohrt goes on to say that increasingly, companies are spending more on such product development efforts and near-term innovations, and less on the basic discovery step.

Such practices do not bode well for the kind of innovation that promises to enable companies to compete successfully in the long run. The bottom line? Such short-sighted thinking tends to yield short-term results. And while this may satisfy the immediate ROI concerns of executives, it may well put those same organizations at risk in future years.

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