"As a traditionally educated engineer, my training teaches me not to guess whenever facts are available."
Ah, but the most lucrative questions are about products not yet invented, for which there are few facts. They are lucrative because there is not yet any competition. If there were lots of facts available, ripe for the picking, then by definition the net margins would be terrible.
For instance, suppose you were a grad student at the MIT Media Lab in 1995. Does it make financial sense to join the work on an electronic ink product? The answer to that question could only have been derived from a series of guesses and wild deductions. You cannot just look up how efficient planar electroluminescent backlights are going to be in 10 years. Or how expensive and power-hungry non-volatile memory devices are going to be in 10 years.
For a research organization to invent and capture a new market, they have to be good at making and using wild guesses about the future. (Looking up answers is valuable too, but for different reasons.)
I think you're badly mistaking what I'm talking about with "looking up answers" - what I'm talking about is considerably more than that.
How efficient will planar electroluminescent backlights be in 10 years? That's a good question - and one we can make an educated stab at given the right historical data, the right experience in forecasting, and a little bit of plain luck. Heck, you're now talking about an entire field of mathematics and engineering in and of itself!
Compare this to the Google interview though - where they expect you to pull a number out of your ass, with no opportunity to consult historical data, no field experts to interview... no due diligence done at all. It is either an extremely poor approximation of real-life problem solving skills, or everyone at Google is recklessly cowboy and trying to deduce every decision ever by sheer will of logic alone.
Ah, but the most lucrative questions are about products not yet invented, for which there are few facts. They are lucrative because there is not yet any competition. If there were lots of facts available, ripe for the picking, then by definition the net margins would be terrible.
For instance, suppose you were a grad student at the MIT Media Lab in 1995. Does it make financial sense to join the work on an electronic ink product? The answer to that question could only have been derived from a series of guesses and wild deductions. You cannot just look up how efficient planar electroluminescent backlights are going to be in 10 years. Or how expensive and power-hungry non-volatile memory devices are going to be in 10 years.
For a research organization to invent and capture a new market, they have to be good at making and using wild guesses about the future. (Looking up answers is valuable too, but for different reasons.)