By the times the 90s rolled around, outside of some small developments in the hard science stuff, the Labs to some extent made itself irrelevant with its outdated structure and "not invented here" attitude. Hence the lack of significant Labs work in Internet technologies (despite being the best poised for such contributions).
Can you elaborate on this? I thought the main reason for the decline of Bell Labs was the change in focus towards "applied research" i.e. research that would payoff for *shareholders*, where previously the fruits were shared more widely. Rather than their structure being outdated, they were forced to change a structure that had worked so well in the past. A classic case of killing the golden goose.
I must say though that behind the few amazing breakthroughs in science and technology, the Labs also housed/funded/protected a large non-productive population.
And this is undesirable why? Is this not how research is supposed to work?
I appreciate and agree with the sentiments expressed about Bell Labs, but if it was my money to hand out, I would, by a slight margin, favour academic research as the recipient.
Not sure that there would be much difference: the old Bell Labs was nothing more than an elite university like MIT. -raghu.
