Bell Labs

Life in the Crown Jewel

By: Narain Gehani

Narrated by: Stow Lovejoy

Bell Labs, the greatest research lab of the twentieth century, has been called America's national treasure and the crown jewel of AT&T and Lucent. To scientists all over the world, pursuing research at Bell Labs has long been a dream because of its brilliant scientists, numerous inventions, academic freedom, and plentiful resources. But now, forced by the marketplace, competition, and economic conditions, the world's most prestigious research lab is in the midst of radical cultural change.

Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel tells the fascinating story of the transition Bell Labs is undergoing as it adapts to new business conditions. After AT&T's break up in 1984 as part of the settlement of a government anti-trust lawsuit, the boom years of basic research started to end. A much smaller AT&T, still a giant company, was thrust into the competitive world. The change, slow at first, picked up pace in the 1990s following the next breakup of AT&T, which created Lucent, Bell Labs' new parent. After a few good years, Lucent found itself in financial difficulty in a very tough telecommunications market. Lucent responded by breaking up into smaller companies, which led to a smaller Bell Labs. Lucent's worsening financial condition forced it to downsize with Bell Labs sharing the pain. Bell Labs is now being forced to move faster and further towards helping Lucent's business needs.

Moving from university-style (basic) research to industrial (applied) research is much more difficult than going from industrial research to basic research because industrial research puts constraints on scientists while basic research frees them to explore new frontiers. Bell Labs researchers, who once were free to focus on innovation, research excellence, and prizes, now have to worry about business relevance. The culture of lifetime employment is gone and the pendulum has swung from basic to applied research.

©2002 Silicon Press

Critic reviews

"Fascinating and highly recommended." (Midwest Book Review)

Could have been great - but not

This could have been a great book about a special organization if it had dealt with the history of the Bell Labs. Instead it is a rambling, redundant set of almost generic statements. "Scientists are different from business people. Business people are different from scientists. And - did you know that scientists are different from business people?..."

There are some interesting bits - but they are sprinkled throughout the redundancies.

Missed opportunity

Narrated by Stow Lovejoy, this is a poor delivery of a weak story about what should be a thrilling telling one of the most potent R&D think tanks American industry has produced. Gehani brushes over personally creating the C programming language and working alongside mighty brains that pushed aside pigeono poo to discover cosmic background radiation left over from The Big Bang. Instead, Gehani feels compelled to talk about managerial details like the lack of power of the Bell Labs president and intricacies of an employee's expense report.

Finally, at the very end, with the story of birthing a business to provide in-car navigation aids (Magellan) does Gehani get it together for the tone of story he should have told, but buy then it is tool late...

Repetitive and boring

I gave up on this after a couple of hours and the 50th time he reminds us that Bell labs researchers did not like to work with the 'business units' - As a 'researcher' with direct experience in C and UNIX he has a story to tell , unfortunately this is not it . Don't waste your Credit on this.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

This book is like listening to paint dry. Like so many other reviewers I expected something completely different. After about 2 hours I gave up; as dull as it is to listen to I can't imagine someone reading the written version.

boring...

perhaps for an insider this might have been useful, but too much talk about jobs and positioning and not enough about the technology.