Originally Posted by
genejockey
I don't think this was so much about Cinelli as about the bike industry in general, which seems to have been pretty stagnant from the mid-50s till about 1980.
...if that's really your overall impression, you ought to read (or re-read) Berto's book, "The Dancing Chain"
Originally Posted by
PeteHski
Based on my experience working for decades in high tech engineering R&D, that statement in bold is almost certainly untrue. I would bet good money that the R&D resources at a leading bike manufacturer are way more expensive than they were 30 years ago, both in labour (engineers) and equipment.
...in that same book, Berto states that Shimano had a company policy in the 70's and 80's, that 10% of the employees should be engineers, and 10% of revenue devoted to R+D. 10% is a pretty significant number, for R+D. It's how Shimano eventually took over the components market, at all levels. It's how they finally (after a couple of false starts) came up with indexed shifting that worked so well, it made everything in competition with it an also ran for about ten years. But I have no idea what percentage of revenues they devote to R+D currently.
Suffice it to say, practical, workable, indexed shifting and the longer cage rear derailleurs that accompanied it made the mountain bike a reality. And the technology, up through and including brifters, is what made Di2 possible.
People take a lot of stuff for granted as a starting point. There's a lot of prior technological innovation that made the current shifting systems possible.