The hottest R&D Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top Business Topics

How Accurate Are Learning Curves?

Construction Physics • 19208 implied HN points • 24 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. Learning rates often change over time and many cost-versus-production curves show breakpoints instead of a single straight line on a log–log plot.
  2. Early learning rates are weak predictors of later learning rates, so using a single historical rate to forecast future costs is unreliable.
  3. Allowing learning rates to change probabilistically (piecewise models) can improve forecasts for some technologies, but the gains are modest and depend on the product, so combining probabilistic outside-view methods with technology‑specific inside‑view analysis is most useful.

China has invented a whole new way to do innovation

Noahpinion • 18765 implied HN points • 04 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. Innovation is a pipeline that moves from broad scientific ideas to specific sellable products, with universities, government labs, corporate R&D, and manufacturers each playing different roles and often handing work off across countries.
  2. China has built a highly vertically integrated, state-coordinated “whole-nation” system that links funding, research, and industry to control the entire innovation chain from basic science to commercialization.
  3. That system has produced huge R&D spending, rising high-quality scientific output, manufacturing dominance, and growing licensing revenues, meaning China is turning research money into marketable technologies faster and reshaping global tech competition.

How the US Won Back Chip Manufacturing

ChinaTalk • 504 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. A focused mix of big incentives (like an investment tax credit and targeted grants) plus a small, execution‑focused team is what actually accelerated a large semiconductor fab buildout in the U.S., not just market demand alone.
  2. Effective industrial policy needs the right balance of simple market tools and discretionary powers for urgent problems, and it must be governed with transparency and insulation from politics or public trust breaks down.
  3. To make this repeatable, the country needs durable state capacity that can attract talent, deploy capital, accept some failures, and differentiate between defensive fixes for chokepoints and offensive bets on future enabling R&D.

An Ace Up Your Sleeve

The Polymerist • 182 implied HN points • 20 Jan 26
đź’Ľ Business R&D
  1. Keep an “ace up your sleeve” by funding exploratory R&D separate from routine technical service so you can pull a big new product when you really need it. That dedicated runway gives a company a real chance to create breakout revenue instead of just marginal improvements.
  2. Senior leaders must protect long-term innovation funding and shield teams from short‑term investor pressure, while mentoring and rewarding experimentation. Creating trust and visible support lets scientists and engineers take big swings without fear of being punished for failure.
  3. Real innovation takes years, lots of failures, and close collaboration with operations and customers, not just optimistic projections. Treat failed experiments as learning and focus on commercialization discipline rather than signaling big future returns without the teams and time to deliver.

Yes, Blowing Things Up Is How We Build Things

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 547 implied HN points • 07 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. Deliberately testing hardware to destruction is a normal, necessary way to find weaknesses and build stronger weapons, and it’s better to fail on the range than on the battlefield.
  2. Calling routine destructive tests mere 'failures' misframes and can unfairly damage companies doing risky but essential national-defense work.
  3. There was a time when the press accepted and even supported testing-to-failure because it sped weapon development, and recent negative coverage represents a shift from that practical mindset.
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The Pentagon Just Bet $100 Million on a Drone Contest. History Says That’s Either Brilliant or a Waste of Money

Gad’s Newsletter • 32 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. Prizes pay only for results and are best when the problem is genuinely uncertain and open to many different approaches, because they attract diverse outsiders and reward solutions that actually work.
  2. Well-designed competitions can spark whole ecosystems and huge private investment when they have crystal-clear goals, measurable outcomes, and built-in paths to turn demos into real, deployable systems.
  3. Prizes also carry big risks—winner-take-all waste, IP headaches, and demos that don’t survive real conditions—so competitions need multi-tier rewards, requirements to capture losers’ learnings, and follow-on funding to avoid squandering resources.

Innovation Job Market Papers 2025 (1/2)

New Things Under the Sun • 96 implied HN points • 24 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. How firms are organized and how markets are structured strongly shape what and where innovation happens: design choices, mergers, venture funding, ownership patterns, and hiring networks all change firms’ incentives and their ability to innovate.
  2. Policies and external forces steer innovation incentives and diffusion: trade exposure, intellectual property rules, PhD programs, regulation of acquisitions, and shocks like extreme heat shape both the quantity and direction of technological change.
  3. Knowledge dynamics—recombination, spillovers, and evaluation—drive growth but create frictions: combining existing ideas fuels much innovation, spillovers make private returns fall short of social returns, and testability or weak exit markets can limit which ideas and startups capture value.

🚀 FP! Week In Review, Briefly #13

Faster, Please! • 182 implied HN points • 22 Nov 25
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. AI anxiety could slow down progress in technology and innovation. It's important to manage these fears to move forward.
  2. California has a unique opportunity to lead in certain areas but there are challenges that need to be addressed.
  3. Using AI to automate research and development can boost economic growth and enhance productivity significantly.

The BBN Fund

FreakTakes • 37 implied HN points • 16 Jan 26
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. BBNs are small, engineering-first research organizations that pursue big, multidisciplinary technical goals by funding work with a mix of customer contracts and grants instead of typical VC or academic models.
  2. Pilot funding has shown there is both demand from flexible funders and supply of founders for BBNs, with early BBNs already winning substantial support and proving the model viable.
  3. The BBN Fund will seed and scale BBNs by deploying low-interest revolving loans, revenue-sharing investments, and modest undirected R&D grants, while a small Central Office will build pipelines of funders, customers, mentors, and contractors to make BBNs sustainable and investable.

Innovation Job Market Papers 2025 (2/2)

New Things Under the Sun • 48 implied HN points • 24 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. Innovation is highly geographically concentrated, and place-based policies like targeted R&D or industrial subsidies can raise growth, though the best approach depends on how technology interacts with local productivity and spillovers.
  2. The pace and pattern of technology diffusion hinge on human-capital and market frictions: worker mobility, training incentives, non-competes, and venture-capital funding shape how fast and widely new technologies spread.
  3. Institutions and regulations — including patent rules, exclusivity periods, financial development, and adaptive regulatory sandboxes — strongly shape firms’ incentives to innovate and the trade-off between protecting inventors and promoting broader technology diffusion.

Will AI cause explosive economic growth?

Economic Growth Blog • 491 implied HN points • 11 Jul 23
🔬 Science R&D
  1. AI generating explosive economic growth is unlikely due to competing feedback loops
  2. Increasing growth in ideas through AI doesn't guarantee the same increase in measured economic output
  3. Economic growth driven by AI ideas may not necessarily lead to overall productivity growth

“Overachievement”: Xiaomi's Decade-Long Chip Development Journey

Interconnected • 323 implied HN points • 25 May 25
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. Xiaomi has been working for over a decade to develop its own chips, overcoming past failures to launch their new Xring O1 chip. This shows their commitment to compete in the high-end smartphone market.
  2. The company learned from its earlier struggles and made smart changes, like bringing chip development in-house to improve teamwork and communication. This helped them build a stronger, more focused chip-making team.
  3. Despite their successes, Xiaomi faces significant challenges ahead, notably the need to sell enough phones equipped with their new chip to make the investment worthwhile. They are determined to continue improving and innovating in this area.

Modern Meditations: Caleb Watney

The Generalist • 500 implied HN points • 19 Dec 24
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. We need to improve government hiring processes to attract good talent. Many talented people are turned off by low pay and slow bureaucratic procedures.
  2. Public investment in scientific research can lead to breakthroughs that the private market often ignores. Funding areas like disease research or innovative technologies can yield unexpected benefits for society.
  3. Understanding and improving how government works is essential. There are many effective ways to enhance efficiency that are often overlooked but can significantly help society.

BGI’s Mei Yonghong: decoupling won’t end, but neither should openness

Pekingnology • 33 implied HN points • 09 Dec 25
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. Open international exchange is essential for scientific progress; without openness research becomes isolated and stalls.
  2. U.S.-led decoupling has revealed deep dependence on Western tools, equipment, and data, creating chokepoints that make a long-term structural clash likely.
  3. China should remain open while trying to move beyond a follower role, acting as a contributor of knowledge, a transferor of technology to other countries, and an organiser of major international science projects.

⤴⤵ Up Wing/Down Wing #27

Faster, Please! • 456 implied HN points • 07 Dec 24
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. AI is changing research and development by making it faster and cheaper. It helps in designing products quickly and may even improve their performance significantly.
  2. Neuralink is working on a new study that allows people to control robotic arms using only their thoughts. This could really help those who have disabilities.
  3. A startup called Kairos Power is building safer nuclear reactors that use molten salt instead of water. This new technology aims to provide clean energy by 2030.

An Applied Crop Genetics BBN

FreakTakes • 7 implied HN points • 30 Jan 26
🔬 Science R&D
  1. The team’s North Star is to make plant engineering like chip design — building synthetic chromosomes and easy, plug-and-play genetic parts so people can design complex, adaptive plant traits.
  2. Progress is blocked by three main technical bottlenecks: transforming and regenerating many plant species, a lack of validated higher-level genetic circuit libraries, and immature hardware to build and iterate large DNA programs.
  3. They fund tool development by mixing contracts and grants, using a high-throughput screening platform to offer screening and co-development services, and aim to grow into an engineering research institute that would need roughly $3–7M per year for about a decade.

Restoring Japan's Leadership In Innovation, Part I

Japan Economy Watch • 379 implied HN points • 11 Mar 23
đź’Ľ Business R&D
  1. Open innovation is crucial for technological advancement, emphasizing the need for collaboration between large companies and startups to succeed in rapidly changing industries.
  2. Japan lags behind in open innovation, with most R&D conducted in-house, leading to a decline in global competitiveness in industries like electronics.
  3. The immobility of star scientists in Japan, due to factors like lifetime employment systems and lack of mobility, hinders the growth of innovative startups and limits the potential for successful spin-offs.

May 2025 Updates

New Things Under the Sun • 160 implied HN points • 27 May 25
🔬 Science R&D
  1. Recent studies show that government funding for research and development (R&D) yields high returns. Estimates suggest that every dollar spent on non-defense government R&D could generate benefits worth up to 210%.
  2. The composition of R&D funding has changed over the years. While support for applied research has dropped, funding for basic research has remained stable as a fraction of GDP.
  3. A significant research paper claiming that AI boosts innovation was retracted due to issues with the data and its credibility. This highlights the need for careful evaluation of research, especially when it could have major implications.

Innovation Job Market Papers 2024 (3/3)

New Things Under the Sun • 192 implied HN points • 06 Dec 24
đź’Ľ Business R&D
  1. Many new PhD researchers are studying innovation topics in their job market papers. These papers are valuable for understanding current trends in technology and business.
  2. Some research focuses on how companies adapt their innovation strategies in response to challenges like climate change and competition. This shows that innovation is not just about new ideas but also about practical responses to real-world issues.
  3. There is growing interest in how digital platforms influence entrepreneurship. These platforms can help small businesses thrive and increase diversity in the market, which benefits consumers.

Gigaprofits: "batteries not included"

Intercalation Station • 279 implied HN points • 29 Mar 23
đź’Ľ Business R&D
  1. Majority of gigafactories are experiencing thin profit margins ranging from 1-3%.
  2. Economies of scale play a significant role in profitability, with larger revenue leading to higher profits.
  3. CATL leads in market dominance with over $47B USD in revenue and over 30% market share in EV batteries.

Big firms have different incentives

New Things Under the Sun • 192 implied HN points • 24 Aug 23
đź’Ľ Business R&D
  1. Large firms conduct R&D at the same rate as small firms, but they may focus more on process innovations rather than product innovations.
  2. The cost spreading advantage incentivizes larger firms to focus on process innovation, spreading costs over multiple products.
  3. Larger firms may be less inclined to engage in product innovation due to the replacement effect, potentially competing against their own existing products.

How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the Chemical Industry

The Polymerist • 116 implied HN points • 16 Jan 24
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. Companies in the chemical industry can benefit from AI tools to improve efficiency and profitability.
  2. AI tools are becoming more accessible for functions like customer relationship management, inventory management, and data organization.
  3. While AI won't replace R&D functions, it can significantly enhance productivity and help companies stay competitive in specialized chemical sectors.

How to Impede Technological Progress

New Things Under the Sun • 144 implied HN points • 13 Jul 23
đź•ą Technology R&D
  1. Policy levers to slow technological progress can be classified into reverse push and pull policies
  2. Reverse push policies raise the costs of research, like restrictions on federal funding and safety regulations impacting chemistry labs
  3. Reverse pull policies reduce profitability of certain tech innovations, like carbon taxes and liability exposure, impacting R&D differently based on company size and innovation potential