File 11: Bell Labs

Question 1

What are the difficulties of organizing RD in industries (3)?

Answer 1

1. how should performance be evaluated with so much uncertainty
2. how should projects be evaluated and decisions on funding be made when there is so much uncertainty
3. how can adequate information flow be ensure between users of technology and researchers

Question 2

What is a successful example of organization or RD in an industry?

Answer 2

Bell Labs

Question 3

Explaining Bell Labs and its company’s characteristics.

Answer 3

(initially a department of ATT) 1. turned into its own company owned 50% by ATT and other 50% by Western Electric: transmitted calls over long distances

2. its projects were funded by contracts with the two owning companies or with local telephone companies
3. has about 15000 employees (1200 phds)
4. core departments in physics, chemistry, maths (basic science)
5. was immensely successful`

Question 4

What are some examples of the major innovations of Bell Labs? (5)

Answer 4

1. transistors
2. use of binary system in message transmission (digital to analog transmission)
3. communication satellites
4. lasers and optical fibers
5. the mobile cell phone systm

Question 5

What technical problems were the bell labs given contracts to address? (6)

Answer 5

1. loss of signal over long transmission line
2. absence of ringtone
3. absence of phone hangup hook
4. effect of atmospheric disturbances when calls were sent via radio waves
5. management for billing purposes of the spectacular growth in numbers and routes of calls for billing purpose
6. meeting the 40 year durability standard (responding to effects of insects)

Question 6

Enumerate some organizational characteristic of the bell labs.

Answer 6

1. senior managers cultivated relations w universities (hired students and uni professionals when had problem)
   2.involvement in war (radar)
2. researchers were allowed to do research based on scientific curiosity
   4.some researchers had very specific mandate
   5, at the point of hiring new recuitrs: they were obliged to sign all patents rights to the Labs for 1$
3. each researcher had to maintain a notebook: any idea had to be logged and signed with a witness (for future paternt claims)
4. new building: long corridor to ensure researchers from different departments ran into each other, labs separated by easily move and soundproof partitions, services were availbale from many outlets (unaffected by lab size change/rellocation)
   8.great depression: work time was used to take courses at columbia
5. seminars and courses were organized withing the labs
6. many technical assistants (hs grad) who had teh same boundaries as scientists
7. labs were slow to integrate transistor into their technology
8. innovations shared with other firms for a modest license fee
9. structure involved 3 kinds of jobs: researchers, system engineers (phone system and solve problem), design engineeris (work on swithces, transmission device)

Question 7

Explain the case of Claude Shannon.

Answer 7

1. recruited in math group before WWII: was math consultant
2. during war: worked on automatic firing and cryptography
3. after war: used binary system in the switch from analog to digital communication: to make it work better he dev way of preserving a message whilst reducing the number of characters transmitted and added characters that could be use to correct transmission errors
4. success led to independence: work on dev machine to play chess, a calculator w roman numerals, self closing box

Question 8

How was the bell labs similar to universities?

Answer 8

has a flexible organization, some curiosity drive research but had a better performance

Question 9

How did the organization of the bell labs RD help it naviguate obstacles? (name these obstacles)

Answer 9

obstacles: competition with independent local phone companies who refuze to carry its call and sound of quality calls was poor
=> att developped these policies: buy local phone companies, make the case to the government for the utlity character of phone service thus giving it monopolu, use RD as an implicit contract with the government (att keeps monopoly and in exchange did a lot of rd and make the rd availbale)

Question 10

What did the Bell labs innovations and diffusion of innovation rest on?

Answer 10

monopoly power but only because of the threath it could lose it => anti trust was critical to firms innovation