I'm not sure how you can say that AT&T never invented anything.
For decades Bell Labs (Part of AT&T) was one of the preeminent research
labs in the world.
From Wikipedia:
/At its peak, Bell Laboratories was the premier facility of its type,
developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including //radio
astronomy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_astronomy>//, the
//transistor <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor>//, the //laser
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser>//, //information theory
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory>//, the operating
system //Unix <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix>//, the programming
languages //C
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28programming_language%29>//and //C++
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B>//. Eight Nobel Prizes have been
awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.//^[8]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#cite_note-8> / //
* /1937: //Clinton J. Davisson
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Davisson>//shared the Nobel
Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter./
* /1956: //John Bardeen
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bardeen>//, //Walter H. Brattain
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_H._Brattain>//, and //William
Shockley <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley>//received
the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the first //transistors
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor>//./
* /1977: //Philip W. Anderson
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_W._Anderson>//shared the Nobel
Prize in Physics for developing an improved understanding of the
electronic structure of glass and magnetic materials./
* /1978: //Arno A. Penzias
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_A._Penzias>//and //Robert W.
Wilson <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Woodrow_Wilson>//shared
the Nobel Prize in Physics. Penzias and Wilson were cited for their
discovering //cosmic microwave background radiation
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation>//,
a nearly uniform glow that fills the //Universe
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe>//in the microwave band of
the radio spectrum./
* /1997: //Steven Chu
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu>//shared the Nobel Prize
in Physics for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser
light./
* /1998: //Horst Störmer
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_St%C3%B6rmer>//, //Robert
Laughlin <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Laughlin>//, and
//Daniel Tsui <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tsui>//, were
awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering and explaining
the //fractional quantum Hall effect
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_quantum_Hall_effect>//./
* /2009: //Willard S. Boyle
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_S._Boyle>//, //George E.
Smith <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_E._Smith>//shared the
Nobel Prize in Physics with //Charles K. Kao
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_K._Kao>//. Boyle and Smith
were cited for inventing //charge-coupled device
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device>//(CCD)
semiconductor imaging sensors./
* /2014: //Eric Betzig
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Betzig>//shared the Nobel Prize
in Chemistry for his work in super-resolved fluorescence microscopy
which he began pursuing while at Bell Labs./
//
/The //Turing Award <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award>//has
twice been won by Bell Labs researchers:/
//
* /1968: //Richard Hamming
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming>//for his work on
numerical methods, automatic coding systems, and error-detecting and
error-correcting codes./
* /1983: //Ken Thompson
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson>//and //Dennis Ritchie
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie>//for their work on
operating system theory, and for developing //Unix
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix>//./
/
/Granted they were spun out of AT&T in 1990's, but still a very
impressive list.
Joe
On 4/14/16 5:01 PM, Lennart Thornros wrote:
Jed,
Very few small companies went belly up because of those examples I
gave. The number of people impact was infinitesimal small.
The other side is that many small companies had the flexibility to
shift and therefore they grow.
AT&T has never invented anything.
Shockley was given credit I think. Not important who and where as it
was many people over decades getting there - I guess the selenium
diode was a German invention in the 30is.
Same thing for HP and TI, which actually are examples of companies
that grow because of seeing the shift. I do not believe that there is
a given formula for all small and all large companies.
I do know that large corporation become stagnant and inflexible at
some point in time. That would be OK. The problem is that we do not
let them follow the natural part and go belly up. The government comes
in and 'save the jobs'.
Really they create a monster with total inflexibility.
You know there are many small companies that are inflexible. That is
because they are often managed by one individual and if he is
inflexible then the company will be and probably not do so good.
Unfortunately there are stubborn inflexible people that cannot see the
forest for all the trees.. No, Jed small companies do not lack
flexibility in general and to survive they need to be flexible.
Best Regards ,
Lennart Thornros
[email protected]
+1 916 436 1899
Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and
enthusiastically act upon, must inevitably come to pass. (PJM)
On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 1:12 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Lennart Thornros <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
There is theory called the S-curve theory. Many examples from
the vacuum tube / transistor evolution and calculators
mechanic / solid state. Plenty of big companies went belly up
as they did not react fast enough.
So did many small companies.
This is why large corporations are a bad thing. They have no
flexibility . . .
The transistor was invented at AT&T, and the calculator at HP and
TI. Those were large corporations. Your own examples show that
sometimes big corporations are good thing, and they sometimes have
flexibility.
Small companies often lack flexibility.
- Jed
