George E Smith, callsign AA2EJ is a radio amateur from Barnegat, New Jersey, USA.  He was one of the three scientists who were jointly awarded the 2009 Nobel prize for physics. The other radio amateur is Joe Taylor W6JT who in 1993 was awarded the Nobel prize for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation… (more)

Just wondering how many people know the origin of this phrase. My guess is it was first introduced to the computer world when Unix and C language were introduce from Bell Labs back in 1984

Seriously. That’s the headline on this incredibly lengthy story in the Boston Phoenix on the rat problem in Boston.

For those of you not familiar with the Phoenix, it us Boston’s alternative paper, which means they’re more able to give longer treatments to stories than the mainstream media papers. I was fairly blown away by the amount of space it gave this story. It certainly is thorough, and it has some great photos.

Kudos, too, to Bell Labs’ Mark Westover and occasional PMP contributor Dale Kaukeinen for representing the industry so well.

If I were a PMP in the Boston area, I’d be bombarding the city with phone calls trying to get in on the action. It sounds like an enormous opportunity to do something good for the city and get immense free publicity out of it.

I did also laugh at the photo below, which makes the rat look pretty demonic — it’s the art designed to grab your attention and make you read the article. I’d say it probably succeeded, but I must admit that if I encountered a rat that looked like that, I would run in the other direction.

If you see this rat, run away — RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN

There are two Management thinkers who have influenced my life, and the lives of  many of my colleagues – even as we struggle to have their ideas embraced where I work (a titanic, long-standing struggle indeed). One of them, W. Edwards Deming,  has been gone for some time now, but the other – Russell Ackoff – just died this past Thursday.  Russ was a giant in the field of Systems Thinking. Russ proposed what I’ve seen referred to as the spectrum of learning. He believed the content of our minds could be classified into five basic catergories: Data; Information; Knowledge; Understanding, and; Wisdom.

Russ had been in the habit of visiting us here on the west coast to share his wisdom and wit at the beginning of every year. He would spend an entire day with, usually, a large group of interested people, sharing stories of his experiences over the years. One of those I remember the best is his experience with Bell Labs. He quite accidentally was involved in the design of a lot of today’s telephone system. From that experience he later would go on to develop his concept of idealized design – a method whereby one throws out everything that’s known about a product or system and attempts to design it based on what would be ideal, then work backward to where you currently are.

Another thing I loved to hear Russ say, which he would do frequently was his admonition that it was much harder for a large organization to stop something once it had started than to agree to supporting any activity that was outside their comfort zone. In other words, “It’s better to seek forgiveness than ask for permission”. Russ also pointed out that doing the wrong thing better only made what was being done “wronger”.  Russ was so full of wisdom one could easily spend days listening to his stories and the knowledge he gained from his experiences, which were many and varied. Russ spent a large part of his life helping Anheuser-Busch truly dominate their market . . . and become the “King of Beers.”

For the past two years Russ had decided no longer to travel out here to speak to us. He was having back and hip problems and dealing with the incessant screening and the long lines and waits in the airport had become too much for him. My colleague, Bill Bellows, who had for years organized monthly telecons with some of the best speakers and writers in the field of systems thinking and management, asked me each year to accompany him to Philadelphia to visit with Russ and our friend Johnny Pourdehnad, a professor of Organizational Dynamics at UPenn. I was fortunate enough to spend many hours with both Johnny and Russell. One of my last memories of Russ is spending a lovely evening with him and his wife, Helen when Bill and I took them out to dinner for Russ’s 90th birthday. At the time Russ was suffering greatly from the pain he was experiencing associated with what he called “a shredded hip”. It was late January and there was lots of ice on the ground. We had to walk to the restaurant from  where we parked and Russ was using a walker. I hovered over him like a brooding hen, scared silly he would slip and fall. He didn’t, thankfully (I had caught him once in his home office), and we had a great meal followed by a birthday dessert. I snapped a picture with my BlackBerry and now wish to share it with whoever may find themselves here.

Russell Ackoff Celebrates His 90th

There are numerous posts and websites where you can learn more about Russ and his work. You found your way here; you know how to search. However, I would like to give mention to one that has been writing about Russell for some time. Ironically, because of one word in the name of this blog, my company’s web filter blocks access to it from inside our firewall. I am referring to “The Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog“, where I got the title for this post.

Russell will be sorely missed by many people. I am hopeful his ideas, his wisdom, his tremendous intellect, and his enthusiasm for understanding and application of systems thinking will find even greater voice now that he is no longer with us. It seems a sad irony of life that so many people only become truly influential after their deaths. Doesn’t say much for us . . . but that’s the way it’s been. I hope Russ’s life will be instructive to many so that we can slowly evolve away from the mundane things that seem to attract us and pay a little more attention to things that matter.

Rick

Part of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics goes to two guys we all owe a lot of gratitude too. Willard Boyle and George Smith, who worked at the revolutionary Bell Labs back in the day took home half the prize for their work which led directly to the Charge Coupled Device or CCD – which is the basis for the sensor most likely in your digital camera today. These guys gave birth to a very good thing then – back in 1969. It took awhile to show up in still cameras – it did more work in television and video (and interestingly in things like the Hubble Space Telescope) – but show up it did. Actually, the CCD was envisioned as a memory device but these guys figured out its real potential. While listening to NPR last night, which had an interview with Boyle, he indicated that his group at Bell also invented flash memory – which again most of us take for granted in our cameras with CF and SD cards. We are not worthy guys. Thanks.

While on that topic, NPR then did an interview with National Geographic shooter Annie Griffiths Belt about her change from a long career shooting film into digital. Belt has taken a lot of great shots for NG, but the image NPR highlighted in its online article is a classic from Victoria Falls – now often emulated by anyone who shows up at the right time of year to take advantage of the river depth. Follow the link to see if you recognize it.

And a few weeks ago, I mentioned another one of these video/still deals for the cover of Outside Magazine. The hype was all about creating something akin to what we’ve seen in the Harry Potter movies when we see The Daily Prophet. Moving images on a still page. There was some speculation that Outside would try to pull something like that off for general distribution. It appears they won’t go that far but the behind-the-scenes stuff from photographer Alexx Henry is very damn cool and continues to show the convergence of stills and moving images. This, I think, is worth the five-minute investment.

About the US, Science reported:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu says that one of his top budget priorities—to spend $288 million on eight break-the-mold energy-research centers modeled after the legendary Bell Labs—was rejected by the U.S. Congress because he failed to deliver the sales pitch in person. It was an uncharacteristic misstep for the 61-year-old Nobelist, who in his 6 months on the job has rarely missed an opportunity to tell policymakers exactly what’s on his mind.
…
Chu began by fingering two key issues for the new Administration. The first is the difficulty of evaluating and scaling up science-education programs (“How do you analyze what works? And how exportable is it?”), and the second is barriers to industrial innovation (“Wall Street often punishes a company for deciding to invest in research”). Then he waded into more contentious waters. Chu asserted that the Defense Department has retreated from funding basic research over the past 2 decades, pinching support for high-risk, high-payoff ideas. And he tweaked the U.S. biomedical research community for being unduly critical of grant applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from colleagues in the physical sciences. “I think they’re afraid some computer scientist might take money from a biologist,” he argued, with a nod to PCAST co-chair Harold Varmus, who had pushed to expand such interdisciplinary research while leading NIH during the Clinton Administration.

About EU, Nature reports:

In a report presented to the commission today, the European Research Area Board (ERAB), which advises the commission, says: “A new governance model for arms-length agencies to deliver research and innovation in Europe is essential for our global position.”
…
Responsibility for managing and allocating funding for European research should be devolved from the European Commission to independent agencies, including the European Research Council (ERC), an advisory board has suggested.

The ERC was set up in 2007 as a pan-European initiative to fund frontier research judged solely on excellence. It allocates €7.5 billion (US$11 billion) out of the €50-billion pot for research in the European Union’s (EU’s) Seventh Framework Programme, which began in 2007 and runs until 2013.
…
By 2030, half of the EU’s funds for research should go towards frontier research, it recommends. Funds from the EU budget used for agricultural subsidies could be redirected towards research so that its share triples to 12%, the report suggests.

The remaining half of the EU budget for research should fund directed programmes that focus on a small number of “grand challenges”, such as climate change, energy supply and ageing societies. This contrasts with funding for the Framework programme, in which money is spread over a large number of research areas that have changed little since the first programme started in 1984.

The report also backs the plan announced on 15 September by José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, to create a European chief scientist. Europe needs a chief scientific adviser “who can speak with authority on behalf of the EU”, says Wood.

Wood says ERAB will thrash out further details over the next three months on how its proposals should be taken forward. It hopes to present concrete plans on the role of Europe’s chief scientist for discussion at a meeting next May.

In India, a letter to Current Science says:

Scientific research is critically dependent not just on funding but also on its timely release. Whether it is the health or the science ministry, government funding agencies pay scant attention to enormously delayed disbursement of funds for approved projects. If justice delayed is justice denied, then in the case of
scientific research it is ‘funding delayed is research retarded’. In general, investigators receive funds 12–18 months after approval. In some instances, it could even be between 3 and 5 years

Often project applications are promptly processed duly up to the decision stage. Peer reviewers do their bit by
promptly giving evaluations. Delay sets in after this; first, in getting the minutes approved and then the actual release of funds. The inordinate delay in disbursing funds to investigators is tantamount to defying the recommendations of peer reviewers.

Crab Nebula

Today’s Nobel announcement for physics goes to three scientists who explored the science behind technology we’re all familiar with – making possible fiber optics and digital cameras.

Charles Kao has worked in both academia and industry, while Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith  worked for Bell Labs in New Jersey (bringing to an astonishing 8 the total of Nobel prizes awarded for work there). The Nobel Academy lauded them as “masters of light.”

Boyle and Smith developed the charged-coupled device (CCD), the “eye” of every digital camera.

“Without the CCD, the development of digital cameras would have taken a slower course. Without CCD we would not have seen the astonishing images of space taken by the Hubble space telescope, or the images of the red desert on our neighboring planet Mars.” (from the Academy announcement)

So thanks to that work, we have the breath-taking image at the top of this post, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. If you haven’t discovered this amazing collection of images (more than 5 million), make haste. Most are copyright free and the scientific collection is particularly good, since a lot of pictures taken in government-sponsored research end up there.

From the folks at Lucent, a nostalgic music video celebrating the contributions of Bell Labs– a facility unique in America history.  The nation’s premier research facility for several decades, it was the hatching ground of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the UNIX operating system, and the C programming language; work completed there earned six Nobel Prizes.

With the breakup of ATT in 1984, stewardship of the Lab passed to Lucent, and the role of Lab began to change.  By August of 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced that it was puling out of basic research altogether, to focus exclusively on more immediately marketable applications; the Bell Labs celebrated in the video is gone.

But its gifts to knowledge and society survive.  Indeed, it’s surely fair to observe that, without work done there, it wouldn’t be possible to for your correspondent to be pelting readers with daily missives via the internet.

As we listen to the background noise of the universe (for the discovery of which, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics), we might take a celebratory trip in honor of Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian  explorer and anthropologist who became famous for his Kon-Tiki  Expedition in 1947 (though he went on many others as well); he was born on this date in 1914…  He once responded to an interviewer, “Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of most people.”

Thor Heyerdahl

If you’re in marketing, I know you’ve heard it. You’re in a meeting, and the CFO or the technology person prefaces a marketing idea with that phrase, “but I’m not in marketing”. It can mean a few things depending on who is saying it. It can mean; “Don’t blame me if this is a stupid idea – after all I am not in marketing.” Or it can mean, “Even I, who do not work in marketing, can figure this problem out.”

Either way, the implication is clear – don’t attach any stigma to them in the high likelihood that the idea fails. It is, in other words, their disclaimer and they are throwing you under the bus.

That’s not so unexpected given the fate of marketing as the corporate sacrificial lamb. But the perpetuation of that type of thinking is entirely misguided because modern marketing should not be thought of as just a functional organization. It should be thought of as a company wide discipline inclusive of everyone that touches any part of the customer experience. That probably covers most people in most companies.

So once that new type of marketing thinking is adopted, let’s turn our attention to understanding what people really mean when they say it (beyond the obvious CYA dimension of the expression).

The answer lies in why Judy Consumer was born, back in the halls of the Bell Labs New Venture Group of Lucent Technology on this very day about a decade ago.  I was in marketing then and my job was to help developers determine what (if any) market value their innovations may have. I had to thread lightly – after all each technology was the personal creation of a developer. I had to understand a technology clearly before I could give the developer the news about whether their technology “baby” could have market value or not.

But getting a good understanding of a technology proved to be more of a challenge than you might think. Developers, as brilliant as they are, tend to be quite esoteric when describing the benefits of a technology. In other words, more often than not, when a developer explained a certain technology to me, I had no idea why anyone would use it.

It was then that Judy Consumer made her debut. I was working on a cool audio technology (5 point surround sound delivered with just 2 speakers), but the developer would speak in terms of decibel and sound perimeter and so forth. I understood the basics, but not the real benefit.

Then, in a moment of inspiration (or frustration – who knows), I told the developer, “Talk to me like I am Judy Consumer and not an employee here. Pretend you are explaining this technology to a friend in a coffee shop”. Then, I could see the light in his eyes and he started to describe why Judy Consumer would love this innovation.

It was then that I began to use the notion of Judy Consumer to help me get developers in the right frame of mind. I needed Judy Consumer to take these clever developers out of their technical world and into the real world where Judy Consumers really live.

But as I continued to use Judy Consumer over the years she helped me understand the phrase, “But I’m not in marketing” better. She helped me realize that what people really mean to say is that they don’t believe they could put themselves in the shoes of a Judy Consumer and see the world through her eyes. They lacked confidence that they had the imagination to get it right.

This is what people mean when they say they are not in marketing. And to some degree they are right. The ability to understand how someone else will respond to technology is what often separates the “marketing pro’s” from the hacks. But that does not let everyone else off the hook. Great marketers learn how to train their corporate and technology partners into seeing the world from the perspective of Judy Consumer.

That’s why I have become so attached to her. She helps me teach everyone in a company that they too are in marketing and Judy Consumer likes the company.

Judy Shapiro

http://twitter.com/judyshapiro

Via KurzweilAI.net — Just wow.

Bell Labs breaks optical transmission record, 100 Petabit per second kilometer barrier

PhysOrg.com, Sept. 29, 2009 Bell Labs scientists have set a new optical transmission record of 15.5 Terabits per second over 7,000 kilometers, using 155 lasers, each operating at a different frequency and carrying 100 Gigabits/second of data. The researchers also increased capacity by interfacing advanced digital signal processors with coherent detection, a new technology that makes it possible to effectively increase capacity by increasing the number oflight sources introduced into a single fiber yet still separate the light into its constituent colors when it reached its destination. Read Original Article>>

Hundreds visited the landmark Bell Labs building last week for an open house. (photo credit: THOMAS P. COSTELLO, Asbury Park Press)

Last Wednesday, hundreds of people attended an open house at the Bell Labs building in Holmdel — the now endangered Eero Saarinen-designed landmark  — organized by Somerset Development.  That firm is proposing an adaptive use of the huge building as a mixed use “town center” and wanted local residents and former Bell Labs employees to get the feel of the incredible building and its awe inspiring spaces.

PNJ, AIA-NJ and DOCMOMO were there to help tell upwards of 1,000 visitors about the history and significance of the building, Saarinen and landscape designer Sasaki & Associates, and to present the findings of the April 2008 Design Charrette.  Mostly we talked with local residents about their love for the building and site, their concerns about how it can be re-used, and heard more great stories from former employees.  Several of the latter were 2nd generation Bell employees who as children had joined their fathers at the grand opening in 1962.  It made us imagine the great glass building’s early denizens as “Mad Men” with pocket protectors!

Somerset’s goal was to energize and inspire local folks to support preservation of the internationally important historic place.  This week’s editorial in the Asbury Park Press certainly suggests our efforts bore some fruit.

See NY Times article

Alcatel-Lucent (s ALU) today said that scientists at Bell Labs have set an optical transmission record that could deliver data about 10 times faster than current undersea cables,  resulting in speeds of more than 100 Petabits per second.kilometer.  A petawhat? This translates to the equivalent of about 100 million Gigabits per second.kilometer or sending about 400 DVDs per second over 7,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Paris and Chicago.

Such capacity increases on our undersea cables are important. A single home isn’t sending about 400 DVDs per second, however, as video becomes increasingly available and downloaded on the web, entire neighborhoods and geographic regions will get there, and that capacity increase is reflected in the growth of long-haul networking demand. That’s why research such as this and new companies such as Cyan Optics are so important to maintaining the current pace of innovation on the web. Now that broadband is our platform we have to make sure it continues to get faster and faster.

The transmissions were not just faster, they were accomplished over a network whose repeaters are 20 percent farther apart than commonly maintained in such networks,  which could decrease the costs of deploying such a network.

To achieve these results, researchers from the Bell Labs facility in Villarceaux, France used 155 lasers, each operating at a different frequency and carrying 100 Gigabits of data per second. The team multiplied the number of lasers by their transmission rate of 100 Gigabits per second and then multiplied the 15.5-Terabit-per-second result by the 7,000-kilometer distance achieved. The combination of speed multiplied by distance expressed as bit per second.kilometers is a standard measure for high-speed optical transmission.

Business Week has a really great article about the value of basic research in R&D Labs to future economies.

Many of the classic scientific research labs, such as Bell Labs and RCA Labs (now Sarnoff Corp.), were started and funded by companies with virtual monopolies and very strong, predictable cash flows. They were able to embrace the uncertainty and serendipity of pure research in the context of their business. But such companies don’t exist today. With the increasing focus on shareholder value that began in the 1990s as global competition heated up, Fortune 500 companies could no longer justify open-ended research that might not directly impact their bottom line. Today, corporate research is almost exclusively engineering R&D, tending more toward applied research with a 3- to 5-year time horizon (or shorter). IBM, Microsoft MSFT, and Hewlett-Packard HPQ, for example, collectively spend $17 billion a year on R&D but only 3% to 5% of that is for basic science.

The End of Labs

It’s not just a shame, it’s actually a very bad strategy in play right now and for the future.  I once remarked at company retreat I was at that often a company or industry matures so much that it’s only strategy is to invent just for the sake of inventing, with the idea that completely new revenue streams might evolve.  I was quickly slapped down by a major executive, “We need to work on things that can be commercialized now.”  I knew then the fate of that company would be mostly an arbitrage of wall street expectations.  And that’s exactly what it, and 1000s of other companies have become.  This is also why this particular recession is so painful – most companies have no institutional ability to innovate.  Two decades of chaising the near term exit, the 30% stock market rocket shot leave industry stagnant.

Know one knows what the next big idea is.  And no one will figure that out without basic research.  And by big ideas, I mean things like the printing press, the Internet, germ theory, genetics, the Wheel.  You know – THE BIG STUFF that powers generations of commerce.

Management consultant Adrian Slywotzky wrote an incredible think piece and call to action in this week’s BusinessWeek. This is a must-read story about the future of America.

I couldn’t agree more with his conclusion that America needs another Manhattan Project or DARPA to inspire and stimulate the next blockbuster industry or two that will keep our nation prosperous and secure.

President Obama clearly appreciates the importance of science. Now he needs to take things to another level and launch the equivalent of our generation’s space race. And this story provides a blueprint to do that.

Where Have You Gone, Bell Labs?
How basic research can repair the broken U.S. business model

By Adrian Slywotzky
Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years. You can’t, because there isn’t one. And that’s the problem.

America needs good jobs, soon. We need 6.7 million just to replace losses from the current recession, then another 10 million to spark demand over the next decade. That’s 15 million to 17 million new jobs. In the 1990s, the U.S. economy created a net 22 million jobs (a rate of 2.2 million per year), so we know it can be done. Between 2000 and the end of 2007 (the beginning of the current recession), however, the economy created new jobs at a rate of 900,000 a year, so we know it isn’t doing it now. The pipeline is dry because the U.S. business model is broken. Our growth engine has run out of a key source of fuel—critical mass, basic scientific research.

The U.S. scientific innovation infrastructure has historically consisted of a loose public-private partnership that included legendary institutions such as Bell Labs, RCA Labs, Xerox PARC XRX, the research operations of IBM IBM, DARPA, NASA, and others. In each of these organizations, programs with clear commercial potential were supported alongside efforts at “pure” research, with the two streams often feeding one another. With abundant corporate and venture-capital funding for eventual commercialization, these research labs have made enormous contributions to science, technology, and the economy, including the creation of millions of high-paying jobs. Consider a few of the crown jewels from Bell Labs alone:
• The first public demonstration of fax transmission (1925)
• First long-distance TV transmission (1927)
• Invention of the transistor (1947)
• Invention of photovoltaic cell (1954)
• Creation of the UNIX operating system (1969)
• Technology for cellular telephony (1978)

DECLINE IN LAB FUNDING
In the decades after these initial discoveries, vibrant industries and companies were born. The transistor alone is the building block for the modern computer and consumer-electronics industries. Likewise, DARPA’s creation of the Internet (as ARPAnet) in 1969 and Xerox PARC’s development of the Ethernet and the graphic user interface (GUI) further developed the transformative computer and Internet industries. The basic research breakthroughs unleashed subsequent cycles of applied innovation that created entirely new sectors of our economy.

But since the 1990s, labs dedicated to pure research—to the pursuit of scientific discovery—have seen funding slowly decline and their mission shift from open-ended problem solving to short-term commercial targets, from pure discovery to applied research. Bell Labs had 30,000 employees as recently as 2001; today (owned by Alcatel-Lucent ALU) it has 1,000. That’s symbolic and symptomatic of the broken link in the U.S. business model. With upstream invention and discovery drying up, downstream, industry-creating innovation is being reduced to a trickle.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Los Nobels de Bell: Steven Chu, durante una charla en MIT acerca de los centros de innovación energética, mencionó el éxito de los Laboratorios Bell a la hora de estimular la invención. Vemos una diapositiva de su charla, en la que figuran los inventores del transistor y los primeros en Bell Labs en ganar los que serían muchos Premios Nobel, incluyendo a Chu. Fuente: MIT World/Technology Review

Los centros de investigación concebidos para acelerar los estudios relacionados con la energía se enfrentan a una dura batalla en el Congreso de los EE.UU.

Un importante intento para modernizar la investigación y el desarrollo dentro del Departamento de Energía(DOE), y que el Secretario de Energía, Steven Chu, considera crítico a la hora de solucionar los problemas relacionados con la energía, se encuentra en la cuerda floja mientras que la administración de Obama intenta convencer a un Congreso dominado por el escepticismo.

El mes pasado los comités de la Cámara y el Senado de los EE.UU. responsables de conceder fondos al Departamento de Energía detuvieron la propuesta de Chu denominada como “Centros de Innovación Energética”. La Cámara denegó financiación para todos los centros propuestos excepto uno, y el Senado sólo financiará tres y de forma provisional. El comité de la Cámara calificó los centros como redundantes y criticó al Departamento de Energía por su falta de planificación y claridad en las comunicaciones relacionadas con ellos. Desde entonces, el departamento ha emitido una serie de cuentas mucho más detalladas en relación a los centros, y la administración de Obama ha señalado que “se opone enérgicamente” a la decisión del comité de reducir los fondos requeridos.

Cada uno de los centros serviría para reunir bajo un mismo techo a los mejores investigadores, para juntos enfrentar uno de los ocho “grandes retos” relacionados con la energía. Los centros estarían diseñados siguiendo las líneas del Proyecto Manhattan, que desarrolló la bomba atómia, y los legendarios Laboratorios Bell, donde la invención del transistor y el desarrollo de la teoría de la información, entre otras cosas, hizo posible que se creara la industria del semiconductor e internet.

“Lo que intentamos hacer es crear un gran sentido de urgencia para así llegar a las soluciones,” afirma un informe del DOE emitido como respuesta a las críticas provenientes del congreso.

La idea de crear centros se inspira en los días en que el propio Chu trabajaba como investigador en Bell Labs. En estos centros de investigación, a los que se dedica una gran cantidad de fondos, se podían encontrar a los mejores investigadores, que tenían la autoridad para decidir rápidamente si financiar un nuevo proyecto o no, basándose en discusiones con los investigadores a los que se les ocurrió la idea en principio. “Podíamos decir que no en una hora, y se podía decir que sí en un día o una semana,” afirmó durante una charla hace poco en MIT. Es más, la gran proximidad de los grandes expertos líderes en una variedad de campos hacía que resultase fácil averiguar qué tipo de trabajos se habían llevado a cabo en un área y qué errores debían evitarse. Después de hablar con un par de personas, “probablemente estabas sentado frente a un experto mundial,” afirmó. En Bell Labs, se cubría toda la gama dentro de la investigación, desde los esfuerzos más básicos por explorar cómo funciona el mundo hasta las investigaciones que ponían en práctica esos descubrimientos y servían para desarrollar soluciones técnicas—fases de la investigación y el desarrollo que normalmente se mantienen de forma separada en las universidades y los laboratorios nacionales.

Estos centros de innovación seguirían este mismo método, con los directivos localizados en los mismos centros en vez de detrás de una mesa de escritorio en Washington. Recibirían financiación completa para cinco años, liberando a los investigadores de los ciclos de financiación anuales que tanto dificultan la planificación. Y la financiación sería sustancial—35 millones de dólares para el primer año, y 25 millones cada año sucesivo. En comparación, los proyectos de investigación de las universidades normalmente reciben 150.000 dólares al año. Para obtener una segunda ronda de cinco años de financiación, los centros deberían probar un progreso significativo a la hora de demostrar que las nuevas tecnologías funcionan, con el objetivo de desarrollar algo que la industria pudiese llevar al mercado.

leer más.

Fuente: Technology Review. Los centros de energía del DOE se encuentran al borde del abismo

Many of you will remember the July 7 article in AdAge on Why Google Voice Reminds Me of AT&T, where I broadly outlined how Google, like AT&T before it, can be undone by its ambition to dominate a key “infrastructure” sector, like the web. I contended in the article that, much like AT&T’s quest to dominate information systems, Google’s quest to dominate web services can divert precious resources from core businesses leaving it weaker not stronger.

The article generated, uh, considerable conversation; some polite, some not – but most were incredulous that I could even dare to make such a comparison.

Now, a mere 3 weeks later, Fred Vogelstein of Wired Magazine chivalrously comes to my defense (however unwittingly on his part) with his article; “Keyword: Monopoly …Why is Obama’s top antitrust cop gunning for Google.” where he explores the Department of Justice’s newly launched anti-trust investigation of Google (see where this is going?).

The article explains why the DOJ is going after Google now:

“Recently, Google’s size and ambitions have begun to obscure its halo. Advertisers watch nervously as the company’s share of the search-advertising market have jumped to 75% from 50% …Google’s largest problem isn’t what the company is today; its what is plans to become. Google aims to create a world in which web services replace desktop software.”

Does this not sound familiar?  The government gets nervous whenever one, very large, commercial enterprise wants to dominate any key infrastructure, whether it is software, information or the web. It was why AT&T and Microsoft were targeted in their day and it explains the DOJ timing now.

This investigation is yet another element demonstrating the parallel between the two companies. Sadly, the DOJ investigation changed everything for AT&T and it is likely to fundamentally change how Google does business, even if the case is not brought for years.  You see, once the government had a “virtual” seat at the AT&T table, the lawyers started running the show. It slowed us down, blunted much of our competitive bite and even restricted which technologies we considered. It simply took the life out of AT&T. Google seems prone to face similar constraints.

At this point, I hope most of you can at least understand why I saw and continue to see a pattern repeating itself. The real question becomes what’s in store for Google? What can Google do better/ differently than either Microsoft or AT&T when they were at this critical crossroads? Maybe nothing – I don’t know. Yet, that does not seem to sit well given Google’s well earned reputation for its Google genius. So for a moment, using history as our guide, let’s consider “out loud” some of their choices – together.

In the face of a potential anti-trust suit, Google can follow the path of Microsoft to fight to keep Google whole. It can use the legal argument of “anyone can go to any number of competitors with a better mousetrap” strategy. But that approach is not without peril if the lesson of Bill Gates’ now infamous court testimony with the resulting loss of Microsoft public good will is any indication. Poof – in a virtual moment, a decade of good will was gone. And the irony of following in Microsoft’s legal footsteps is rich given Google’s corporate culture of being as much anti-Microsoft (e.g. their “Don’t be evil” mantra) as it is “for” anything.

Google has another option; one that celebrates what Google what it does most brilliantly; innovate with new business models to create sustainable, profitable and ethically oriented corporate growth. It is an option that follows the contours of AT&T’s footsteps (read on before you all descend into an epileptic shouting fit), but avoids its failures.

Here’s what I mean.

AT&T ended breaking itself up into seven companies (the 7 Baby Bells of which three are still around) after a lengthy and costly battle which left AT&T very much weakened in the process. Maybe, just maybe, Google takes the first, brave step to focus on getting smaller and better – not necessarily around becoming bigger. Google can consider innovative ways to spin off smaller, more sustainable businesses via a consortium or community of like-minded companies. This community of companies model was first tried successfully by the Bell Labs New Venture Group in the late 1990’s. It operated with a structure that let connected businesses share basic, scalable overhead services like HR or marketing, but they remained relatively small to allow for innovation and ideas to flow freely. I was there that time and I can attest to the fact that with this model, we were able to more quickly assess and launch new technologies with successful outcomes.

While getting “smaller” may echo back to the AT&T “breakup”, that’s where the similarities can end. AT&T never really embraced the notion that smaller companies could be stronger and more profitable. Perhaps Google, by staying true to its very DNA to “be a force for good on the Internet” can free us from outmoded business models where bigger is automatically assumed to be better. Google can keep its cool by being a role model for a well balanced company that’s big enough to stay strong and innovative but not too big that it drowns in its own grandeur and bureaucracy.

It has not been done yet. In this respect Google reminds me of no one. And maybe this is what saves them.

Judy Shapiro

This is a reprint from Ad Age DigitalNext column.

Love them or hate them, office parks have become a reality in about any major city in the developed world (especially here in North America).  Office parks typically offer a cheaper alternative for office space than downtown while still retaining some kind of pleasant atmosphere for the employees that work there.  Yet, what happens when these office parks are no longer used?  What about turning them into condos?  A blog post entitled ‘would you live in a suburban park?‘ over at Fast Company describes how developers in Holmdel, New Jesery are hoping to turn the Bell Labs (built around 1960) into a new mixed use development with retail on the ground floor and lofts on the upper floors.  Originally planned for destruction, scientists around the world came together to save the structure for both it’s historical importance and it’s architecture.

The idea is certainly an interesting one.  But it isn’t one that I believe can pick up much steam, especially if this trend continues to other less highly regarded office parks.  I’m just unsure of what type of people would choose to live in it.  The photo above (courtesy of FastCompany.com) displays the isolation of the office park which could also be a detriment to the retail finding customers outside of the residents of the building.  Either way, i’m all for the preservation of a building with some kind of historical importance, even if it is an office park.