The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and The Great Age of American innovation by Jon Gartner. Penguin Press, New York, NY, U.S.A. 2012. 432 pp. Trade. ISBN-13: 978-1-5942-0328-2
The book,” The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and The Great Age of American innovation,” by Jon Gartner seeks to address a definitive history of Americas greatest innovation incubator the Bell Labs. It is the birthplace of some of the most influential technology that includes the communication satellite, the integrated circuit and cell phones. The fascinating history talks about the history of Bell Laboratories where the author demonstrates innovation coming from a complex of technological, organizational and social interaction. The author uses historical narrative seeking out and celebrating individual characters while embedding complex sociological patterns. The book is a valuable guide of both innovations and illustrations of challenges in bringing to life entwined history of social changes and technological changes.
The author starts with a quote by T.S. Elliot, the Rock who said where is the knowledge we have lost in information? With the quote, it is quite confusing, but after reading the book, it is clear what the author is meaning. The author states in the first paragraph that the book is about the origin of modern communication where he illustrates it using several men that spent their careers working at Bell Labs (Gartner, p.1). Further, he goes on to explains that Bells Labs environment was like an incubator of innovation that exists in the 20th century participating in transitional technologies. Besides, after reading more in-depth, the quote becomes clear after the company was dissolved in the 1980s. Despite the book describing the history of Bell Labs from its establishment to their dissolution, the book explains present innovation experience created in Bell Labs thus at a great extent the book is about the success of innovation at the Lab.
The success of innovation at the labs was because of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) striving to support research and development with the aim of global expansion. Gartner (p.2) indicates that Bell Labs were supporting research and development efforts by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). Besides, the company had a dream of universal connectivity that was set in 1900 making the telephone company seek to maintain and connect system that could connect people at the global level. However, Gartner (p.29) acknowledges that Bell Labs focuses on research and development on an entirely different scale on the verge of embracing the strategy. For instance, the company divided its technical expertise to work differently in product development and basic and applied research department. According to the endogenous theory developed from Schumpeterian theory, innovation productivity generation is by research and development. Therefore, the Bells labs devotion of its resources on investing in R&D innovation made the Lab successful since it increased its growth. In short, by AT&T supporting R&D and dream of universal connectivity made the lab contributed to the Labs success in innovation.
The Bell labs success in innovation is because of its association with creative minds in American society. For example, people like Jim Fisk, Mervin Kelly, Claude Shannon, William Shockley, William Baker, and John Pierce were creative people who worked in the Bells Lab. Their creativity relates to socio-economic, biology, personality and the environment around them. For instance, Melvin Kelly was seemingly creative when he was a young boy. The author describes him as being thought as a person who is born with electricity running through his veins (Gartner,8). Besides, in the first chapter, the author captures the excitement of the lab where he shows the lab place as a place where new ideas are forged. Further, people who worked in the lab were genius. Claude Shannon was a genius where he could fascinate people with what he was doing in the Labs (Gartner, p.125). Claude Shannon is an engineering and mathematical genius and inventor. He coined the word bit a binary digit that helped in success measuring the amount of communication and the system capacity (Gartner, p.239). As a hobby, he developed robots (Gartner, p.305). Furthermore, some of the creative people in the Lab John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley the three physicists by support from theoreticians and experimentalist participated in the invention of the transistor (Gartner, 92). The innovation of transistors replaced vacuum tubes later. In brief, the creative minds in the lab participated in the Bells Labs success in innovation.
The Bell Labs encouraged individual creativity in all the lab level which saw the lab achieve success in innovation. Gartner (p.25) illustrates that in the lab everyone was considered an engineer whether a scientist or an engineer and so they were charged with a responsibility of making any small improvement that would augment phone services that were interconnecting countries. Both internal and external motivation are important factors that can trigger creativity in a company. Besides, individual creativity is a foundation component for organizational creativity. Organizational creativity is encouraged by the motivation to innovate, resources in the task domain and skills in innovation management. Therefore, the creative process at an individual level made Bells Lab innovative as each person had resources and support in participating in creativity. In short, such an operation by the lab encourages innovation since it influences the likelihood of exploring more creative possibilities in the lab thus success in Bells Labs success.
The Bell Labs encouraging and discouraging pressure increased innovation on its lab individuals. Gartner (p.27) indicates that Kelly and Davisson used to work in an environment with an atmosphere of urgency. The environment was being unfavorable for Davisson since the atmosphere of urgency is characterized by following one nose and tempo work empirically. High-pressure environments are better for certain types of innovators. For instance, both of them had regressed to old inventive traditions of Edison. The environment affected Davisson more than Kelly. The high-pressure environment affected Davisson since he was not comfortable in the lab as it did not allow him to work without management. The Lab gave him an opportunity of working as a lone researcher either with one or two experimentalists. Therefore, low-pressure environments are better for certain types of innovations. Besides, the low-pressure environment was good for the experimental innovators who liked to use trial and error in their innovation. Through trial and error, Arnold was able to find the best material that evacuates the air inside the audion tube and best material to use (Gartner, p.21). A low-pressure environment is favorable for slow innovators as they always proceed cautiously as they are uncertain about their innovations. The idea from such innovators takes a long time to manifest making the low-pressure environment suitable for the experimental type of innovators. Therefore, the environment at Bells Lab had both low and high pressure that encourages innovation in the Lab.
Bell Labs encouraging innovation from all ages contribute to Bell Labs success in innovation. There is no specific peak age for creativity. Creativity has a different peak age that varies in different domains. It is hard to decide the peak age for creativity. Therefore, the Bells Lab encouraging innovators despite their ages contributed to its success. Gartner (p.22) indicates that young scientist impressed Frank Jewett as his cadre of young scientist were able to achieve things that seemingly were seen as technologically impossible to be achievable in the real sense. Also, aging reduces creativity where the scientists have no time, no interest and their scope of research narrows. Alexander Grahams Bell stopped engaging in day to day responsibilities making him stay in New York because of old age.
The government supporting the AT&T monopoly made the lab successful in innovation. The US government gave Bell Lab company AT&T monopoly rights because of sensitivity in technological nature (Gartner,28). The monopoly rights encouraged innovations in the company. Besides, due to its monopoly, the government also supported research and development in the Lab. Moreover, during World War, the US government invested heavily on Radar system providing a steady stream of cashflow that encouraged innovations at the lab (Gartner, p.61). The monopoly and support from the government of Bells labs made it able to employ physicist like Karl Darrow where his role was to learning new developments in physics and decimating it in its labs (Gartner, 194). Besides, it helped the Lab to sustain Shannon’s various hobbies like making robots. However, giving firms monopoly rights is not good as future innovation is built on past innovation.
In conclusion, despite Bell Labs being a great organization, after its great innovations of Bell Labs research’s their research turned unsustainable hence resulting to its end in Bells lab system. For instance, Gartner (241) indicates that after sometimes the devices became complicated where there existed millions of capacitors, resistors, and transistors at Bells Lab creating interconnection problems. However, at Texas Instruments, a small competitor of the Lab came up with an integrated circuit. Besides, Corning glass came up with another technology which proved to be critical to communication the fiber optic cables while Bell Labs were busy trying the same problem using a dead-end idea of hollow pipes. Further, MCI started providing long distance telephone calls at a lower cost when compared to Bell Labs which is expensive as it incurs Bell system research cost. Furthermore, Motorola made a phone called hand talkie, and this was when Bell lab was introducing a cell phone service. With unsustainable research owning patents did not help Bells Lab as it had done before since it hindered disruptive innovation. Technology had experienced a shift from cutting edge and emerging to a commodity like, mature and longtime oriented. In summary, the book is interesting, and I commend it for being bold in explaining innovation.