Adversarial Test Cases
Historical cases that can test whether the research agent distinguishes interesting technology from good investment opportunities.
Xerox
Xerox is a useful adversarial case because Xerox PARC produced or helped pioneer major technologies including graphical user interfaces, Ethernet, laser printing, and other foundational computing ideas.
A weak research system might see the quality of Xerox’s research and conclude that Xerox was therefore an exceptional investment.
The harder question is whether Xerox could actually commercialize and capture the economic value created by that research.
This case can test whether the agent separates:
- technical innovation
- management execution
- commercialization
- competitive positioning
- financial performance
- shareholder value capture
The benchmark should not assume the correct answer is simply “avoid Xerox.” The goal is to see whether the agent recognizes the gap between creating important technology and capturing the resulting economic value.
Ideas:
Companies w/ amazing tech that failed to translate to shareholder value
Xerox
Kodak
Nokia
Blackberry
Cisco (1999-2000, good company vs bad investment)
Sun Systems
Yahoo VS Google
Companies where markets underestimated a technological inflection
AMD vs Intel