Rebuilding Corporate Research for a Stronger American Future

Tsao, Jeffrey, Beyond the Endless Frontier: Rebuilding Corporate Research for a Stronger American Future (October 13, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5600892 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5600892

The American R&D enterprise, long considered the global gold standard and a cornerstone of national security and economic competitiveness, faces mounting concerns regarding its productivity and societal relevance alongside intensifying international competition. In the meantime, a powerful component of that enterprise that, in the 20th century, helped create the science and technology foundation for our 21st century world lies dormant. That component is corporate research labs: labs that uniquely excelled at research embedded in real-world problemand-technology-rich use environments but curiosity-motivated to learn and discover with ultimate benefit to broader society. Here, we sketch a complete, though still evolving, vision for corporate research, its importance to a healthy R&D enterprise, and how we might rebuild it in a 21st century public-privatepartnership form. We refer to the vision as the "Bell Labs Xs" vision, to signify that there would be many Bell Labs Xs, all emulating the essential magic of corporate research labs such as the iconic Bell Labs of the 20th century while competing with each other and evolving in an "X-like" manner. This vision represents a radical rethinking of the Endless Frontier's sole focus on academia-harnessing American industrial prowess to create public, not just private, goods, and in doing so revitalizing American leadership in societally relevant science and technology.

H/t Tyler Cowen.