Bunuel wrote:
Competition Mode Question
The year after a company whose success depends on product innovation has a profitable year, it invests more cash in its research and development department to attempt to generate innovations that can ensure future success. Therefore, companies whose success depends on product innovation should generate more innovations during the years following profitable years of business than during years following unprofitable years of business.
Which of the following, if true about a company whose success depends on product innovation during the year after a profitable year, casts the most serious doubt on the conclusion drawn above?
A. Its employees ask for higher wages than they do at other times.
B. Its management participates more in research and development and makes process alterations.
C. Its research and development team members propose more project ideas that the company does not have time to act on than usual.
D. Its management increases monetary team rewards for successful innovation.
E. Its innovations increase in quantity, but have a higher rate of failure when applied to the market.
Official Explanation
Reading the question: The first sentence is a fact and the second provides an opinion. We have another pseudo-syllogistic argument, so we can parse it by term matching:
The kinds of companies and the timing of the actions in question both match up well. The mismatch is in the last row, especially between the verbs "invest" and "generate." Even if it's a fact that they invest in R&D the year after a good year, does that mean that they should generate more innovations the year after a good year? Maybe not; maybe the results are not so accurately timed, and/or occur after a delay. That's our weakener.
Applying the filter: our filter does not show up exactly as expected. But we're looking for yes on the investing and no on the generating, a failure to generate. Choices (A), (C), and (E) all sound negative, but don't necessarily impede the company's ability to generate the innovations. We're left with (B) and (D). (D), if anything, might help generating innovations. Choices (B) could be helpful or harmful, but it's the only one left. And if the "processes" have been "altered," they could be worse.
The correct answer is (B).Attachment:
image020.jpg [ 11.01 KiB | Viewed 43494 times ]
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