Many of the great research-and- development laboratories of the 20th century have been downsized or broken up. Despite nostalgia for powerhouses like Bell Labs, they are unlikely to return.
Those industrial labs were often supported by de facto monopolies that have since been swept away. With knowledge concentrated in those few large companies, society had to rely on centralized internal research to generate innovation. But useful knowledge is much more widely distributed today, making it infeasible and unwise to hoard vital knowledge in such silos.
