There’s a subtle distinction between freedom to suggest ideas and freedom to pursue ideas

# §Bell Labs Model

### Questions
- [[Why was Bell Labs Different?]]
- [[Why hasn’t Bell Labs been replicated?]]
- [[Was Bell Labs an anomaly?]]

### Conclusions
- [[Bell Labs and AT&T had timescale alignment]]
- [[Bell Labs is one of the few examples of an innovation org that was aligned with its money factory]]
- [[Bell labs had a budget of 2.8 billion 2020 dollars]]
- [[Bell Labs was only profitable in conjunction with AT+T]]
- [[AT+T benefitted significantly from creating better technology]]
- [[Regulation drove many of Bell Labs’ actions]]
- [[All the work at Bell Labs needed to tie back to the system]]
- [[Bell Labs empowered young people]]
- [[Bell Labs hired people before they had a role or expertise]]
- [[The work at Bell Labs that was most valuable to AT+T and the work that was most valuable to the world was fairly disjoint]]
- [[The famed bell labs research was a fraction of their activity]]
	- [[Bell labs was primarily not researchers]]
- [[Bell labs brought many disciplines together under the same roof and broke down barriers between them]]
- [[Bell Labs did not give researchers complete freedom]]
- [[Bell labs asked people to do useful things but left them room to say huh that’s funny]]
-  [[Bell Labs management was extremely light]]
- [[Bell Labs didn’t have a unique model]]
- [[Bell Labs selected for people with only academic pedigrees and with a sense of adventure]]
- [[Bell Labs was not a business]]::NW::
- [[Bell labs existed before continuous improvement was expected]] ::NW - stub::
- [[Bell Labs was a dance of individuals and institution, prototyping and manufacturing, invention and discovery]]::NW::
- - [[Bell Labs enabled free radicals]]



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Materials and manufacturing underpin civilization

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

AI research is an exception to the decline of corporate R+D

Regulation drove many of Bell Labs’ actions

Bell Labs was not a business

Bell Labs enabled free radicals

Good quotes

The famed bell labs research was a fraction of their activity

All the restrictions the US imposed historically to counter monopolies are the business models of tech companies today

Architecture matters for creativity

One function of a private ARPA is to fill in the gap once filled by corporate R+D

Bell labs had a budget of 2.8 billion 2020 dollars

Bell Labs selected for people with only academic pedigrees and with a sense of adventure

One way for an R+D org to address existential threats is to tie into a core product

The Idea Factory

Bell Labs

§Bell Labs Model

# Was Bell Labs an anomaly?
### Related
- [[Why hasn’t Bell Labs been replicated?]]


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Bell labs asked people to do useful things but left them room to say huh that’s funny

Was Bell Labs an anomaly?

# Why hasn’t Bell Labs been replicated?
Is this actually true - could you argue that PARC was a replication of Bell Labs?
- [[Regulation drove many of Bell Labs’ actions]]
- [[Conversation with Daniel Windham 31/10/2019]]

### Answer
My answer is that no R&D labs *working on physical technology* meet the conditions  necessary to create a high-quality corporate R&D lab. [[Healthy corporate R+D requires a trifecta of conditions]]. Note that [[AI research is an exception to the decline of corporate R+D]]. 

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Ben's working notes

Was Bell Labs an anomaly?

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