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Who's going to do our research?

R. D. Chimblo & Associates, Houston, United States (formerly director of the Geotechnology Research Institute at the Houston Advanced Research Center)

Corresponding author: R. Chimblo, rchimblo@prodigy.net

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Who's going to do our research? Maybe the question is really: Who's left to do our research? Remember what that old college professor said to us during our first general session class ... usually in an auditorium like this filled with 500 young, inquisitive minds: "Look to your left ... look to your right ... the student next to you won't be here next semester." What a motivational speech that was!

Perhaps we are starting to feel that way again. For those of you who will be doing the research, I would like to offer some guidelines that I call the three Rs of research:

• results
  
• relationships
  
• responsibility
  

First, we must acknowledge that research is a business. In fact, sometimes research is a business within a business, such as a unit or department inside a major oil company or service organization. Moreover, just like any other business, research has deadlines, budgets, and measures of success. Unfortunately, not all research, internal or external, is conducted as a business. Perhaps that is why so many bottom-line managers only tolerate research rather than proactively support it.

There is always a lot of talk about technology, research, and the new e-commence for oil and gas. Every exploration or field development meeting includes some major discussion on the latest and greatest technology—where it was being developed, who was going to commercialize it . . . [Full Text of this Article]