# Corporate RnD orgs have a lot of momentum Finances matter: corporate budgeting doesn’t redo everything every quarter, instead budgets are benchmarked to a previous quarter or year. So it is harder to get new budget than to keep or expand old budget. Careers matter: people want to work on visible highly resourced projects. It looks better for your career if your project expands and worse if it contracts or ends. Everybody wants to show a track-record of sustained success all the all the way up the hierarchy. Individual researchers want their projects to succeed so they get out into the world, managers want their researchers projects to succeed so they look good, division level managers want projects that become visible to succeed because that is how they can justify more budget, and the CEO wants projects to succeed to please the board and public. People want to be associated with success. There is no natural lifespan of a project. Once a project comes into existence, projects are by default alive. The budget for multiple projects comes out of a single pool so the number of new projects should roughly decrease with the number of existing projects. ## Related [[Organizational Momentum]] [[Sunk-cost fallacy]] ## References [[Conversation with Charlie Songhurst 12/2018]] <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Corporate+RnD+orgs+have+a+lot+of+momentum) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Corporate+RnD+orgs+have+a+lot+of+momentum)