Bell Lab's had the most Nobel prizes of any for profit institution at 7. There's 13 non-for profit organization that have eight or more. Even if you drop out the political Nobels (Peace and Economics), there's still 11 entities out there besting the best that for-profit institutions have to offer. Also, most of these Nobels have been in the past hundred years, so no need to normalize out the advent of democracy.
It's true that for profit enterprises take these discoveries (e.g. Giant Magnetoresistence, MRI, Fiber Optics, CCDs) and ramp them up for mass production. However, they're still tweaking the major break-through made by people focused on things besides the personal accumulation of wealth.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/universities.ht...
Bell Lab's had the most Nobel prizes of any for profit institution at 7. There's 13 non-for profit organization that have eight or more. Even if you drop out the political Nobels (Peace and Economics), there's still 11 entities out there besting the best that for-profit institutions have to offer. Also, most of these Nobels have been in the past hundred years, so no need to normalize out the advent of democracy.
It's true that for profit enterprises take these discoveries (e.g. Giant Magnetoresistence, MRI, Fiber Optics, CCDs) and ramp them up for mass production. However, they're still tweaking the major break-through made by people focused on things besides the personal accumulation of wealth.