If you've been following the headlines in the world of AI, you might be fooled into thinking that corporations are doubling down, rather than withdrawing, from pure research. But on the ground, things are considerably more complicated -- tech companies are spending more on the development part of R&D while relying more on cash strapped universities to move the needle on research. The Golden Goose Project, a new data visualization effort from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, attempts to highlight this paradigm shift with patent and research output statistics as well as data quantifying how research is applied, both inside companies and in the broader ecosystem. For example, you can see how IBM's patent output rose continually while publications involving employees peaked and fell off around 1992. But while all of this data underscores a decline in corporate research, it doesn't indicate that corporates are becoming any less innovative.

The Golden Goose Project, a new data visualization effort from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, attempts to highlight this paradigm shift with patent and research output statistics as well as data quantifying how research is applied, both inside companies and in the broader ecosystem. Huge research group acquisitions, like Google's $500 million purchase of Deep Mind, highlight an industry-wide desire to conduct more AI research internally. But while this research has helped companies like Facebook, Microsoft and Google make huge strides in AI, it isn't a universal formula for corporate innovation. One major shortcoming of The Golden Goose Project is that it only takes into account data collected between 1980 until 2006.