Since the mid-1980s, industrial research in the United States has gone through major organizational changes. Funding for centralized corporate research laboratories in the high technology industry, which leads in research, has shifted from corporate sources to business divisions. Research has been either transferred into individual business units or organized along product lines for well-known markets. As a result, support has shifted to low-risk, mission-oriented, and short-term research, and an extensive involvement of business elements in research activities. Basic research projects seem to be completely gone from centralized corporate research laboratories. In the long run, the shift away from the untargeted inquiry can be problematic to the company, as well as to the country.