Any discussion of R+D in singapore has something to do with Phillip Yeo, so for the reader's information I'd like to make things clear.
1. I've never worked for him before.
2. I'm not a scholar. I don't have a PhD, only a "basic" degree. However, I don't wash test-tubes for a living.
3. I don't have a good opinion of him, based on what people have said about him, as well as what he says about himself on the media.
Since we got that out of the way...
I've worked for a Government-Linked-Company(GLC) solving "impossible" problems with "limited" budgets with "partial" solutions for more than five years. While I haven't forgetten the "Cheap, Fast and Good" adage of engineering I've come to realise that with my inherent lazy attitude, abhorrence for manual labour and knack for automation I've come to realise that the three parameters C + F + G = K, that K wasn't constant but a function of the amount of tools and talents available for the job.
Now talents are of course human beings, which are fickle creatures. Sometimes if you're lucky, you get someone who's good. I happen to be very good. Really. I say this not because I have an oversized ego, but because the years of trying meet someone of my calibre within the organisation has always led to some measure of dissappointment. I have to go and solve their problems. I never had to call someone to solve my problems... The more promising ones leave for overseas employment in the US. Is it a pay issue? That would be HR... Perhaps I'm being paid below my worth? I've met plenty of people who are paid more than their worth... In any case, new people take a generation to grow up, and if innovation takes that long...
So what's left is the tools... But of course, you can't give someone a tool and expect that person to magically become an expert. The function of a tool is to save the person using it some time. The person still has to know the intricacies. The relationship is somewhat like:
time_taken = time_taken_to_manually_do_job * tool_used (skill_of_user)
Now I was thinking, isn't improving the tool the easiest way to improve the capability of an organization? Shouldn't we spend money doing R+D to improve the tools rather than hiring big name researchers?
Why shouldn't we buy the tool off the shelf then? Sure you get immediate resuls (it wouldn't be cheap though). Great item for VIP visits. Here is a excerpt from Richard Feynman's Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! that beautifully illustrates the whole issue.
MIT had built a new cyclotron while I was a student there, and it was just beautiful ! The cyclotron itself was in one room, with the controls in another room. It was beautifully engineered. The wires ran from the control room to the cyclotron underneath in conduits, and there was a whole console of buttons and meters. It was what I would call a gold-plated cyclotron.
Now I had read a lot of papers on cyclotron experiments, and there weren’t many from MIT. Maybe they were just starting. But there were lots of results from places like
Cornell, and Berkeley, and above all, Princeton. Therefore what I really wanted
to see, what I was looking forward to, was the PRINCETON CYCLOTRON. That must be
something !
So first thing on Monday, I go into the physics building and ask,
“Where is the cyclotron–which building?”
“It’s downstairs, in the basement–at the end of the hall.”
In the basement ? It was an old building. There was no room in the basement for a cyclotron. I walked down to the end of the hall, went through the door, and in ten seconds I learned why Princeton was right for me–the best place for me to go to school. In this room there were wires strung all over the place ! Switches were hanging from the wires, cooling water was dripping from the valves, the room was full of stuff, all out in the open.
Tables piled with tools were everywhere; it was the most godawful mess you ever saw. The whole cyclotron was there in one room, and it was complete, absolute chaos!
It reminded me of my lab at home. Nothing at MIT had ever reminded me of my lab at home. I suddenly realized why Princeton was getting results. They were working with the instrument. They built the instrument; they knew where everything was, they knew how everything worked, there was no engineer involved, except maybe he was working there too. It was much smaller than the cyclotron at MIT, and “gold-plated”?–it was the exact opposite. When they wanted to fix a vacuum, they’d drip glyptal on it, so there were drops of glyptal on the floor.
It was wonderful! Because they worked with it. They didn’t have to sit in another room and push buttons! (Incidentally, they had a fire in that room, because of all the chaotic mess that they had–too many wires–and it destroyed the cyclotron. But I’d better not tell about that!)
I'm sure those in the know, know what I'm talking about. That concludes what I have to say.
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