I asked my father, who has spent the past 40 years at Xerox PARC and worked with Bob Taylor, what he thought of this post. He wrote:
That all seems reasonable to me. My guess is that the most important factors are great people and a great leader. One of my co-workers, who was involved with starting a research center in France said “A people hire A people. B people hire C people”. So, the first few people that you hire are really important.
I think that the main job of the leader is to keep people happy and focused. Most of my managers have been really good leaders.
I also think that being co-located is very important. When I am out of touch with my co-workers, I tend to lose motivation.
...
BTW, one of the reasons that the best leaders usually have a technical background is that it is hard to identify the very best people without it. That is why non-technical companies have trouble hiring good programmers, and conversely why the best tech companies were founded by people with a technical background.
Another thing I remember him once mentioning to me is that PARC bought its researchers very expensive, cutting-edge equipment to do research with, on the assumption that Moore’s Law would eventually drive down the price of such equipment to the point where it was affordable to the mainstream.
I asked my father, who has spent the past 40 years at Xerox PARC and worked with Bob Taylor, what he thought of this post. He wrote:
Another thing I remember him once mentioning to me is that PARC bought its researchers very expensive, cutting-edge equipment to do research with, on the assumption that Moore’s Law would eventually drive down the price of such equipment to the point where it was affordable to the mainstream.
He’s willing to answer questions.