I have been wondering recently how companies work in the 40K universe. In most science fiction today the big bad guys tends to be an evil company that is just out for it own profits which in turn leads to uncovering something horrific, usually through RnD. But does RnD actually happen in 40K in places other than the Adeptus Mechanicus? For some reason I am really having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

Salcor

Salcor said:

Officially, R&D doesn't really happen in the Adeptus Mechanics. "The Crime of Innovation" is not exactly well-recieved, so much of their research work is reverse-engineering of archaeotech - as per the Creed of the Cult Mechanicus, all knowledge that ever will exist, already exists (because the Omnissiah is the personification of all knowledge), and it is simply a matter of time before all of it is recovered.

Of course, that doesn't stop outsiders - oblivious to the Sixteen Universal Laws of the Cult Mechanicus - from dabbling in things they do not understand. Such things are Technoheresy, of course, but so many things can be deemed Heresies Against The Machine and yet go unobserved or even unpunished (so many heresies, so little time).

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I am also wondering are sector wide companies in the calixis sector mainly noble houses. There are a few listed in the main rule book, but nothing else has really surfaced in the same vein.

Salcor

Research does happen in the Ad Mech. One must remember we are dealing with a society that worships a being who knows everything and considers a number of fields of knowledge to be forbidden. Ad Mech research tends to focus on refining knowledge of all ready undestood principles or new technical applications of those principles. Some good examples are the huge mining machine in Malleus and the Magus Biologius research projects on death worlds. R&D isn't something that IoM companies tend to do themselves, although they do lisence tech knowledge from the Mechanicus. There are companies large and small, some of whom are interstellar in scope. They aren't necessarily noble run, but there is very little social mobility so the higher ups will tend to be from comparatively wealthy families. On some worlds that might mean noble or the ability to buy noble titles.

I'd say that the upper echelons of a transtellar corporation are already de facto members of the imperial aristocracy, even if they do lack noble titles. Aside from the AdMech, and the Navis Nobilite, I'd guess that most transtellar companies and corporations are either raw-materials-exploitation (think oil companies, mining syndicates, even stuff like the deBiers diamond cartel) or mercantile-system goods traders (think de Medici, and other venetian merchant princes). I suspect that many such companies, corporations, cartels and combines will also operate as banking houses for private individuals or smaller companies. Odds are their basic cargoes will be either raw materials (actual rare stuff, like Melange from Arrakis, as a properly managed/developed/exploited system should be able to fulfil the majority of it's raw materials need domestically, especially if there is an asteroid mining industry), food-stuffs for those systems with little arable land and few orbital agricultural facilities and high tech/luxury items unable to be produced locally.
At least, that's how I'd expect the system to work, if it was developed from similar basic premises to 40k/Dune. Of course, it is 40k, so weirdness and variation can be expected to be the norm...