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Article's point is though that they shoveled useful and relevant problems at them. This is extremely clear if you spend some time reading the BSTJ or the pheno
by nullc 2y ago
Article's point is though that they shoveled useful and relevant problems at them. This is extremely clear if you spend some time reading the BSTJ or the phenomenal "The History Of Engineering and Science in the Bell System" books.
So while there were not significant pressures to produce products there was a culture of working on relevant problems or in areas connected to relevant problems. ... rather than going full open-loop gazing deep into the category theory of their navels -- which appears to be an occasional failure mode of academia.
In working with academics in niche areas there often is a thirst for applications-- like you've found some interesting idea but where to go next? What constraints need to be solved for to make this interesting property into something useful. Applications would be a good guide if anyone would provide some, but the connections often don't exist. Part of the magic sauce of Bell labs must have been this enormous science and engineering driven industrial corporation that could just flood real problems at people who needed them.
- greesil 2y agoI have known of a hundred person organization that was supposed to do R&D and after six years produced nothing of value. I have seen a team of twenty launch a hardware product in a year. Purpose is important!
- mjevans 2y agoSolutions in search of a problem. Rather than Problems in search of a solution, possibly related to this technology.
- moandcompany 2y agoI'd argue that a concise explanation for these organizations having keen abilities to make great impact with their research is related to their participation in the golden age of "operations research" ... they had a plethora of real problems to solve, some of these being in a wartime environment, and collections of bright and capable engineers/scientists/mathemeticians/physicists/etc that were motivated to solve those problems. They were also allowed to explore areas where they reasonably believed value might exist without being forced to ship quarterly or being forced to pursue and sell their pursuit of what would be sexy to investors
- randomcarbloke 2y agohave you read The Idea Factory and is it any good or is it just a pop-history of the place?