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> The most obvious comes from the fact that there were a lot of people working at Bell Labs. There's a number of issues I'd raise with the piece, but the above
by jpdoctor 15y ago
> The most obvious comes from the fact that there were a lot of people working at Bell Labs.
There's a number of issues I'd raise with the piece, but the above is not one of them. There were a lot of people in a number of R&D labs, but measuring the output per person (examples: nobels/papers/patents/citations per employee) I'd guess there was something special about the place.
Full disclosure - I'm a Bell alum, so perhaps I'm glorifying the past.
- justincormack 15y agoWe are not necessarily going to find out easily how to recreate these occasional convergencies of creativity and innovation. Bell was a huge monopoly that was very costly for the US and maybe the innovation was worth that cost. Microsoft maybe us in a similar position but not as productive. Google looks the best bet right now for an innovation centre. The other thing of course was that various antitrust settlements meant that Bell could nit charge for many inventions, such as Unix. This made it more open than the modern paranoid corporation... Must have been a great place to be.
- got2surf 15y agoMy dad was a Bell alum, and I agree completely. It's rare to have this convergence of genius, creativity, and perhaps most importantly money - but when it happens, society is forever improved.
- jmares 15y agoCould you tell us about project genesis at Bell Labs? How did projects originate, grow, and get killed or morphed? Thank you.
- jpdoctor 15y ago> project genesis It was a big company: I pretty much saw the entire scale of formal defn to skunk project.
- jmares 15y agoThanks jpdoctor. Could you elaborate on what you mean by formal defn? Who defined them, out of which principles or goals? (I understand that this might have multiple answers)