Bell Labs

gertnerIdeaFactoryBell2012

Bell Labs is one of the few examples of an innovation org that was aligned with its money factory

§Bell Labs Model

Labs Document Outline

# Bell Labs and AT&T had timescale alignment
# Bell Labs and AT-T had timescale alignment
Both Bell Labs and AT&T had a [[Buxton Index]] of a few decades - they both thought about problems on the timescale of decades. 

 On AT&T’s side, their government-approved monopoly and the mandate that allowed them to maintain it both gave them the [[Slack - concept]] to plan on the scale of decades *and* the incentive to do so.  

I’ll make a hand wavy argument for Bell Labs’ Buxton index by using the transistor as an exemplar. It officially took eight years - from 1946 to 1954 to create the silicon transistor. However, work on the transistor began in the 30s before WWII (and was paused during the war) and the first electronic switching centers came on line in 1964.  All together, the transistor timescale was maybe 20 years.[^1]  It seems reasonable to use this 20 year mark as a rough approximation for Bell Labs’ Buxton Index. 

It’s hard to imagine the rough equivalence between AT&T’s Buxton Index and Bell Labs’ was a coincidence.

This alignment changed after AT&T’s breakup. Bell Labs’ Buxton index didn’t change, but thanks to competition AT&T no longer had the luxury of a multi-decade Buxton index. 

![](../BearImages/7922CB30-5949-4360-82B8-20283BFE41AA-88049-000786B4DA543094/IMG_0115.jpg)

### Related
- [[Bell Labs didn’t have a unique model]]
- [[Innovation orgs need to be aligned with their money factory]]
- [[Bell Labs was not a business]]
- [[Rewards in a big company operate on one timescale and R&D happens on another timescale]]
- [[Mismatched Buxton Indexes lead to shear forces]]

[^1]:I have very little evidence, but my hunch is that 20 years is roughly the timescale to go from the hunch that a phenomenon can be exploited to  exploiting it at scale. [[Phenomena-based cycles]]. This timescale is probably compressed for electronics and software because of Moore’s law and development speed (though perhaps not as compressed as many people intuit.) 20 years is *shorter* than the 50 year Buxton index that [[EW Dijkstra]] suggests (is/should be) the norm in Academia. [[The Strengths of the Academic Enterprise]]. 



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PARPA needs a constitution with checks and balances

Research is especially susceptible to Goodhart’s Law

Rewards in a big company operate on one timescale and R&D happens on another timescale

Charlie Songhurst conversation 31 Aug 2021

Bell Labs and AT&T had timescale alignment

dijekstraStrengthsAcademicEnterprise1994

There are many parts of the US government that are heavily influenced by term-level time scales

The timescales of invention and discovery are high variance

Inverting the normal relationship between an R+D organization and is money factory may enable new classes of activities

Glossary

Long-term projects are inherently highly levered up

Peter van Hardenberg Conversation 20 Nov 2020

# Buxton Index
[[Mismatched Buxton Indexes lead to shear forces]]

From [[The Strengths of the Academic Enterprise]]
`The Buxton Index of an entity, i.e. person or organization, is defined as the length of the period, measured in years, over which the entity makes its plans.`

More detail:
` For the little grocery shop around the corner it is about 1/2,for the true Christian it is infinity, and for most other entities it is in between: about 4 for the average politician who aims at his re-election, slightly more for most industries, but much less for the managers who have to write quarterly reports. The Buxton Index is an important concept because close co-operation between entities with very different Buxton Indices invariably fails and leads to moral complaints about the partner. The party with the smaller Buxton Index is accused of being superficial and short-sighted, while the party with the larger Buxton Index is accused of neglect of duty, of backing out of its responsibility, of freewheeling, etc.. In addition, each party accuses the other one of being stupid. The great advantage of the Buxton Index is that, as a simple numerical notion, it is morally neutral and lifts the difference above the plane of moral concerns. The Buxton Index is important to bear in mind when considering academic/industrial co-operation.`

`To begin with, there is the great difference in Buxton Index. For industry, the Buxton Index is less than 10, probably closer to 4 or 5, whereas for the academic scientist the Buxton Index is closer to, say, 50, for what you offer your students should last a lifetime, their lives, to be precise.`

Invented by [[John Buxton]] not [[Bill Buxton]]

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Gatekeepers are essential to Institutions

People who have done a thing should be in charge of a thing

§Institutions and Games

Organizations and people lend each other social capital

Individual actions reflect on Institutions

What makes a good organizational mission?

National service could unfuck the US

New fields need to be exclusive

Enabling creative work that is not currently happening will require breaching institutional barriers

You can think about institutions as systems

The fact that the torah is always in Hebrew is powerful

How can you claim to be making a new field if you are writing for a general audience?

Science should be less open unless you want to dig deep and engage

# Institutions need to differentiate between individuals inside and outside the institution
In the same way that organisms need to clearly differentiate between cells that are part of them and not part of them, institutions need to differentiate between individuals who are inside and outside of the institution. [[Institutions are the second level of a group selection evolutionary system]].

Therefore institutions need a way of differentiating an in-group and an out-group. Differentiating an in-group and an out-group is just gatekeeping. And since [[Organizations don’t do anything, people in organizations do things]] [[Gatekeepers are essential to Institutions]]. The need to differentiate in-group and out-group also means that all institutions are to some extent, ‘exclusive.’ 

Obviously “it’s complicated” as it is with biology! You gut is full of bacteria, etc.



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§Academia Constraints

Successful professors are not necessarily the best researchers

Why would people want to work with PARPA?

National labs and other government research centers are a research alternative to universities

A PI needs to provide evidence that they have access to a lab facility

University professorships are the highest status jobs in academia

# Professors do three or more jobs
- Teach students
- Mentor graduate students
- Help run the academic department
- Manage a research group
- Apply for money 
- Do research



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Buxton Index

It takes roughly 20 years to exploit a phenomenon at scale

# The Strengths of the Academic Enterprise
66 Institutions have operated continuously since 1530:
- Roman Catholic Church
- Lutheran church
- Parliament of Iceland
- Parliament of the Isle of Man
- Universities

Terms that subtlety change meaning
- Scientist
- Engineer
- Theoretical
- Experimental
- Applied
![](BearImages/27803535-7FCA-430C-B2C3-DE40665BF605-98199-000BD37383818622/B3575AD4-A52E-45FE-B2FB-CFDB3998C3E7.png)
![](BearImages/B6A36F1C-7113-4EF5-B0B3-31EC8CA937C3-98199-000BD380793C254B/1A2E0CF8-86E7-4069-9A02-1A9F54123A71.png)

![](BearImages/FE6D56FC-A07D-4886-8D61-B5BC8D4A9850-98199-000BD378FD30AED1/74D3A943-967D-4BDD-B4D7-93DAF67FDAE0.png)
![](BearImages/97F9B1FD-3919-4801-8FBE-C2BE204EFFCD-98199-000BD385AD0F00DA/EFE0B975-7886-4462-BFB3-30F1AB1843F0.png)
- Introduces the [[Buxton Index]]
- ::Has anybody ever done buxton analyses of institutions?::
- 
![](BearImages/03FD1C6A-AF2D-4406-ACE1-0A9442D7A233-98199-000BD3E366741515/FF1E0D48-0E57-4C61-A561-6AD90EDFC410.png)
![](BearImages/AE3FAED3-4B17-41C7-BDE1-FEC9ADFDADC1-98199-000BD3E9CDFDC925/D0C63DD8-893E-4B33-9F1A-CDF70CFFEF63.png)
::this seems like a false dichotomy - there’s tons of tacit knowledge in universities:: 
![](BearImages/F9120BF1-97AD-4A04-B841-19D961F97C90-98199-000BD411B96889CA/AC0EB00D-7BFB-4A59-AB49-87EC35160DF6.png)
- [[The boundaries between industry government and academia are fuzzy]]
-  [[Institutions need to differentiate between individuals inside and outside the institution]]
![](BearImages/E283E18C-BE97-4A60-8417-369BFA2D4C43-98199-000BD42B2FAE7B55/9289B9A0-8F2D-4DC5-BF5D-AC3C681E1C90.png)
![](BearImages/2DB6327E-C76E-4A49-9523-73F4EDCEDDC5-98199-000BD457946413EA/71EB2C93-A4E1-4AEB-B548-9A6EF739F738.png)
- ::Tension around individuality in academia::
- 
![](BearImages/4AC35689-A04B-4A8F-9522-844D81AABC6C-98199-000BD45FAD1A25F0/1D6AAC6A-C0E2-4B13-B5F5-B81CB17E9723.png)
![](BearImages/3E2EE8CD-D010-44F3-8DFE-9F5B90429A81-98199-000BD463E28FB63E/7879CD8C-F39E-4451-9EBA-765A4EC792E9.png)
- ::Against collaborations!::
![](BearImages/E6F8AEB5-658F-4328-9524-AD6622CEF342-98199-000BD47873568D78/14A46378-6FE8-486B-97BF-E67243191D24.png)
- ::This is a *very* complementary view of academic scientists::
- 
![](BearImages/0596ED5B-4BD0-4206-84BB-AFAA0F14F946-98199-000BD483EDDCF168/0FF25678-E617-42DC-9EE7-12780F755820.png)
	
![](BearImages/A0B7ACA2-4C5A-44B2-8EE4-FEEC5449FDCB-98199-000BD4C573068459/426362D2-9D98-4080-9AE9-8F9ED8CFE153.png)

### Published
## Questions
## Thoughts
## Related
- [[Professors do three or more jobs]] 

## Authors
[[EW Dikjstra]]
## Link
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pnck24xqtp9ikdv/ewdijkstra%20archive%20the%20strengths%20of%20the%20academic%20enterprise%20%28ewd%201175%29_2020-09-19%2016.13.52.pdf.pdf?dl=0



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# The boundaries between industry government and academia are fuzzy
Usually the fuzziness comes from one group paying for research that another group is doing. 

Grad students and post docs work in government labs, like [[National Institute of Standards and Technology - NIST]] or the [[Naval Research Laboratory]].

Academic labs work on corporate grants - you can see this in everything from subcontracting on government projects to the origins of Genentech. [[Genentech was started by bringing together several pieces of existing research and subcontracting to university labs]]

Government labs like [[National Institute of Standards and Technology - NIST]] work on corporate projects through grants the same way they work for the government. 

Corporate R&D works on Government grants all the time. 

In this whole structure, [[People giving out grants try to derisk them as much as possible]] so it is more likely that a more ‘established’ institution will get the grants.

### Related
- [[It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it]]
- [[§Academia Constraints]]
- [[§Corporate R+D Constraints]]



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The Strengths of the Academic Enterprise

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