The January 2004 issue of Fast Company has an article titled Brains For Sale which talks about how IBM is using its research labs as a sales tool. The basic gist is that IBM is sweetening some deals by including access to researchers at the various IBM research centers. This is an interesting twist on something that IBM has been doing for a while. It's well documented that IBM is making a lot of money from its extensive patent portfolio. This seems to be taking that notion one step further. Why wait for IBM researchers to invent something and patent it? Why not bring them right into your company and get them to help solve your really hard problems? It will be interesting to see how this works out. If it works out it'll actually put some truth in the much ballyhooed phrase "our most important asset is our people".

At the same time, I'm a bit ambivalent about this. Having been a researcher for a while, I've been dismayed at the slow decay of corporate research laboratories, and it's tempting to view this as another step in that direction.