> While this is an admirable academic exercise, is it better than any other study that produces in the end a more palpable result, like money?
You seem to believe that research results in the most revenue when managers and bureaucrats are in control, but I disagree. Wiener's argument is that managers and bureaucrats often don't even accomplish their stated goals (which should be fairly objective) due to their lack of subject knowledge, e.g., in your example, how to increase revenue. Required subject knowledge makes the right path forward invisible to most people. Many people are fond of efficient market type arguments suggesting these things are unlikely, but if the number of eyes who can spot the problem is small, efficient market ideas don't work.
Jacob Rabinow, a prolific inventor, had a list of "laws", and this is one of them, which basically summarizes the problem:
> When a purchaser, who doesn't know the difference between good technology and garbage, orders "good technology," he will always get garbage.
If someone can't tell the difference between good quality research and bad quality research, they'll likely optimize on cost or some other axis and make a poor decision.
I try hard to provide value to industry, but I find that industry folks avoid the sort of theoretical engineering work I do because they don't like math. Again, some of this is a marketing failure on my part, but this is only a fraction of the problem in my view. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Some of this seems to stem from managers and bureaucrats not trusting researchers. Yes, many researchers would waste the money, but this to me is similar to managers and bureaucrats wasting money because they don't know what they're doing. I see no reason to be "acutely aware" of researchers' faults but not the faults of managers and bureaucrats. Ultimately we need a hybrid approach, not the largely top-down manager and bureaucrat controlled approach we have right now.
