當(dāng)業(yè)界開始盛傳化工巨頭陶氏化學(xué)即將與杜邦將要合并的消息時(shí)，顯然此次合并并非是投行家們?yōu)橹鹄皇植邉澋钠胀ń灰住杉夜驹诿绹臍v史加起來有331年。在歷史最為悠久的《財(cái)富》美國500強(qiáng)企業(yè)中，杜邦排名第四。

能讓這兩家公司脫穎而出的并非只是其歷史。在當(dāng)前服務(wù)業(yè)GDP占全國經(jīng)濟(jì)總量80%的美國，這些聲名顯赫的企業(yè)竟然做的是實(shí)體經(jīng)濟(jì)，而且更為重要的是，它們投入了大量的資金，為的是研究如何才能做出更好、更賺錢的產(chǎn)品。

When rumors began to fly about a merger between chemical giants Dow Chemical DOW 1.97% and DuPont DD 1.65% , it was obvious the deal was not your ordinary fee-driven scheme dreamed up by investment bankers. The two companies have 331 years of American history between them, with DuPont claiming the title of fourth-oldest Fortune 500 firm.

But it’s not just their ages that distinguish these companies. In an economy in which roughly 80% of GDP comes from the services sector, these vaunted institutions actually make stuff—and perhaps more importantly, invest a lot in researching how to make better and more profitable stuff.

然而，在當(dāng)前美國很多投資人的眼中，像杜邦這樣擁有大量研發(fā)預(yù)算的企業(yè)是拖累他們業(yè)績的罪魁禍?zhǔn)住＜みM(jìn)投資者尼爾森?珀?duì)柎慕衲暝缧r(shí)候便與杜邦首席執(zhí)行官艾倫?庫爾曼有過交鋒，而研發(fā)支出則是其爭論的焦點(diǎn)。在珀?duì)柎难壑校瑤鞝柭鼘蒲幸约敖鉀Q世界重大問題的執(zhí)著是杜邦投資者難以負(fù)擔(dān)的帝國大廈。（在爭論結(jié)束之后，庫爾曼辭去了杜邦公司職務(wù)。）

且不論杜邦的研究預(yù)算是否花的值當(dāng)，很多人對以前企業(yè)做出重大發(fā)現(xiàn)的那段時(shí)光仍是念念不忘。數(shù)十年前，杜邦發(fā)明了尼龍和特氟龍，陶氏化學(xué)則發(fā)明了聚苯乙烯。美國人依然癡迷于往日那些集中式的研究計(jì)劃，例如AT&T的貝爾實(shí)驗(yàn)室或施樂的 PARC研究中心。這些地方的科學(xué)家們曾因其工作成果獲得過諾貝爾獎，并為世界帶來了革命性的發(fā)明，例如晶體管和計(jì)算機(jī)鼠標(biāo)。

如今，貝爾實(shí)驗(yàn)室成為了Alcatel-Lucent的一部分，但是其在新澤西州霍姆德爾鎮(zhèn)的龐大園區(qū)（早期手機(jī)技術(shù)在這里獲得了突破）已經(jīng)變成了一個(gè)混合用途的新城市地產(chǎn)開發(fā)項(xiàng)目。施樂的PARC仍位于帕拉奧托，但該設(shè)施已于2002年成為了一個(gè)獨(dú)立的子公司，目前專注于需求研發(fā)，而不是開放式的、催生了一批知名發(fā)現(xiàn)的基礎(chǔ)性研究。

In the eyes of many investors in the U.S. today, however, the large research budgets of companies like DuPont are precisely what’s holding them back. When activist investor Nelson Peltz tussled with former DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman earlier this year, R&D spending was a main talking point. What Kullman defended as a commitment to science and solving the world’s big problems, Peltz saw as empire building that DuPont’s investors could ill afford. (When the dust settled, Kullman resigned.)

Whether or not DuPont’s research budget was well spent, there’s plenty of nostalgia for the days when businesses were making huge discoveries. Decades ago, DuPont invented nylon and Teflon. Dow, for its part, created Styrofoam. Americans are still fascinated by the centralized research programs of yore, like AT&T’s T 0.49% Bell Labs or the Xerox XRX 1.13% PARC laboratory, whose scientists’ work won Nobel Prizes and led to revolutionary inventions such as the transistor and the computer mouse.

Today Bell Labs exists as a part of Alcatel-Lucent, but its once sprawling campus in Holmdel, N.J.—the site of early breakthroughs in cellphone technology—has been converted into a mixed-use, new urbanist real estate development. Xerox PARC still calls Palo Alto home, but in 2002 it was spun off as an independent subsidiary and now engages in R&D on demand rather than the open-ended basic research that yielded some of its more famous discoveries.

要弄清楚企業(yè)在研發(fā)方面到底花了多少錢并不是件容易事。從研發(fā)成本來看，開支/營收比近年來十分平穩(wěn)。大多數(shù)全球500強(qiáng)企業(yè)并沒有披露其研發(fā)開支，即便有95家企業(yè)公開了這一支出，但其信息涉及的類目過于寬泛，因此也沒有太大的用處。畢竟，研發(fā)的內(nèi)容可以包羅萬象，大到貝爾實(shí)驗(yàn)室的宇宙背景輻射的發(fā)現(xiàn)（這一發(fā)現(xiàn)最終導(dǎo)致了大爆炸理論的誕生），小到Twitter全新的“喜歡”鍵的創(chuàng)造。

為了更好地了解企業(yè)在研發(fā)方面所耗費(fèi)的資源，經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家阿希什?阿羅拉、沙倫?貝倫宗和安德魯?帕塔科尼研究了學(xué)術(shù)雜志中發(fā)布論文的上市企業(yè)科學(xué)家所占的比例。這一發(fā)布于2015年的調(diào)查敲響了警鐘。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，在2007年之前，僅有6%的上市企業(yè)在科學(xué)雜志上發(fā)表了研究論文，較1980年下降了近2/3。

事實(shí)證明，這一現(xiàn)象對于投資者來說是無關(guān)痛癢的。阿羅拉還發(fā)現(xiàn)，在其他要素得到控制之后，在研究方面投入越多的企業(yè)往往股市市值越小。他說，與35年前相比，“企業(yè)對科研的重視程度下降了，對它的需求也減少了。”

我們是否應(yīng)為此感到擔(dān)憂？喬治梅森大學(xué)的菲利普?奧斯沃爾德表示，近幾十年研發(fā)開支的下降實(shí)際上是對常態(tài)的回歸，因?yàn)槎?zhàn)之后以及冷戰(zhàn)期間過多的投資大部分都用在了軍事技術(shù)方面。

此外，盡管企業(yè)實(shí)驗(yàn)室獲得諾貝爾獎可能為其母公司帶來了榮譽(yù)，但這些成果不一定都能賺錢。有時(shí)候，受益的反而是其競爭對手——例如施樂發(fā)明的電腦桌面圖標(biāo)便遭到了史蒂夫?喬布斯的剽竊。將發(fā)現(xiàn)成果貨幣化實(shí)非易事，而這也讓當(dāng)前的管理層對大興基礎(chǔ)研究的做法心存芥蒂。

盡管研發(fā)投入縮水的負(fù)面影響并沒有很快地顯現(xiàn)出來，但這并不意味著其后果不足為道。企業(yè)科研投入的下降與生產(chǎn)率增長的下滑不謀而合，而后者自2004年以來便一直是美國經(jīng)濟(jì)的夢魘。從2004年開始，經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家所謂的總要素生產(chǎn)率——也就是衡量勞動力和資本如何共同推動經(jīng)濟(jì)增長的指標(biāo)——一直只有前10年水平的一半。國際貨幣基金組織經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家最近比較了美洲多個(gè)國家的生產(chǎn)率增速，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，研發(fā)開支排名靠前的國家擁有較快的總要素生產(chǎn)率增速。

鑒于美國的競爭對手——尤其是中國——并未在加強(qiáng)研發(fā)方面有絲毫的懈怠。事到如今，我們可能應(yīng)該拋棄投資者押注短線的意見，并重燃美國對企業(yè)科研的激情。科學(xué)慈善聯(lián)盟會長馬克?卡斯特納說：“如果我們不去開展基礎(chǔ)性研究，其他國家便會取而代之。”(財(cái)富中文網(wǎng))

翻譯：馮豐

校對：詹妮

Figuring out just how much corporate research has waned is surprisingly difficult. Look at R&D costs, and you’ll find that spending as share of revenue has been fairly steady in recent years. But most Fortune 500 companies don’t disclose that spending, and for the 95 that do, the category is so broad as to be not very useful. After all, R&D can include everything from Bell Labs’ discovery of background radiation (which ultimately led to the development of the big bang theory) to Twitter’s sparkly new “l(fā)ike” button.

To get a better sense of the resources dedicated to research, economists Ashish Arora, Sharon Belenzon, and Andrea Patacconi looked at the share of publicly traded corporations whose scientists publish in academic journals. The findings, published in 2015, were alarming. They found that by 2007, just 6% of publicly traded companies were publishing research in scientific journals, down nearly two-thirds from 1980.

That, it turns out, is just fine with investors. Arora also found that after controlling for other factors, companies that engage in more research are worth less in public markets. “Corporations value basic science less and demand less of it” than they did 35 years ago, he says.

How worried should that make us? Philip Auerswald of George Mason University says the decline of R&D spending in recent decades is essentially a return to normal after overinvestment in mostly military technology following World War II and during the Cold War.

Plus, the Nobel Prizes won by corporate research labs may have earned their parent companies prestige, but they don’t always make money. Sometimes it’s competitors that benefit—think Steve Jobs’ appropriation of Xerox inventions like computer desktop icons. The difficulty of monetizing discoveries has helped dissuade a generation of management from spending big on basic research.

But while the fallout may not be readily apparent, this doesn’t mean it’s not severe. Less focus on corporate research has coincided with the decline in productivity growth that has been plaguing the U.S. economy since the middle of the last decade. Since 2004, growth in what economists call Total Factor Productivity—or the measure of how well an economy combines labor and capital to create economic growth—has been half of what it was in the prior decade. IMF economists recently compared the productivity growth in various American states and found that those where R&D spending was the highest also showed faster TFP growth.

With America’s economic rivals—in particular, China—showing no letup in their willingness to boost research and development, it may just be time to stop listening to investors betting on the short term and reignite the American love affair with corporate science. “If we don’t do the basic research,” says Marc Kastner, president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance, “other countries will.”?