It is worth noting what I think was AT&T's plan about implementing inventions.
I think it was driven by their financial plans.
Back in the 1960s and early 1970s -- and before the 1960s -- AT&T was one of
the largest corporate bond issuers in the country. They were balancing growth
in physical plant with the amount of bond finance --- and the prices they
charged to earn a rate of return on investment, which was subject to state
regulation. Bond buyers were deluged with AT&T bonds, though they were a first
class credit.
It is clear that they could have invested more dollars per year in that
period than they did. If they replaced plant, e.g. physical mechanical
switches, with electronic switches, they could have operated a more efficient
system. But they were writing off the physical plant (of all sorts) on a
well-planned depreciation schedule and suddenly making much of it obsolete
would have thrown rates and financing into turmoil. So they planned to, and
did, replace plant with newly innovated plant under a controlled strategy,
driven by finance. They were holding back their own rate of growth, of both
sales and physical plant, deliberately. They were both inventors and users of
inventions and thus in an awkward tension.
For some inventions, which didn't threaten the plan, it may be that
they were quite open to sending them out into the world quickly. Not sure of
that.
Gene
On Feb 26, 2012, at 9:51 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
> There's an interesting story in today's NY TIMES about the success of
> Bell Labs. [
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-and-the-bell-labs-miracle.html
> ] It would be interesting to compare Bell Labs to Lucent Technologies
> and Alcatel-Lucent, which seem to be a failure compared to BL. I'm no
> expert, but Lucent's history suggests that competitive capitalism can
> slow or even prevent serious invention (while AT&T's monopoly
> capitalism stifled the implementation of inventions). Another thing
> the article should have examined is the role of intellectual property
> rights. While Bell Labs was all about sharing information, the new
> regime is about keeping knowledge secret.
>
> --
> Jim Devine / "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to
> be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But
> in poetry, it's the exact opposite." -- Paul Dirac
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