Corporate Research Laboratories And The History Of Innovation

With the beginning of the twentieth century, American corporations in the chemical and electrical industries began establishing industrial research laboratories. Some went on to become world-famous not only for their scientific and technological breakthroughs but also for the new union of science and industry they represented. Innovative ideas do not simply appear out of the blue and spread on their own merit. Rather, the laboratory's diffusion takes place in a cultural context that goes beyond corporate capital and technological change. Using discourse analysis as a method to comprehensively capture the organizational field of the early American R&D laboratories from 1870 to 1930, this book uncovers the collective meanings associated with the industrial laboratory. Meanings such as what and where a laboratory is supposed to be, who the scientist is, and what it means to practice science provided cultural resources that made the transfer of the laboratory from academic science into an industrial setting possible by rendering such meanings understandable and operable to big business and organizational entrepreneurs fighting for hegemony in a rapidly evolving market. It analyzes not only the corporations that established laboratories in the United States but also their contexts – economic, political, and especially scientific – showing how "the industrial laboratory" was transformed from an organizational novelty into an expected institution in less than two decades. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, historians, and students in the fields of organizational change, discourse studies, the management of technology and innovation, as well as business and management history.

The definitive history of America’s greatest incubator of innovation and the birthplace of some of the 20th century’s most influential technologies “Filled with colorful characters and inspiring lessons . . . The Idea Factory explores one of the most critical issues of our time: What causes innovation?” —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review “Compelling . . . Gertner's book offers fascinating evidence for those seeking to understand how a society should best invest its research resources.” —The Wall Street Journal From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.

A compilation of 3M voices, memories, facts and experiences from the company's first 100 years.

The definitive history of America’s greatest incubator of innovation and the birthplace of some of the 20th century’s most influential technologies “Filled with colorful characters and inspiring lessons . . . The Idea Factory explores one of the most critical issues of our time: What causes innovation?” —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review “Compelling . . . Gertner's book offers fascinating evidence for those seeking to understand how a society should best invest its research resources.” —The Wall Street Journal From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.

From the bestselling author of The Trillion Dollar Meltdown and The Tycoons comes the fascinating, panoramic story of the rise of American industry between the War of 1812 and the Civil War

Limited by Design is the first comprehensive study of the varying roles played by the more than 16,000 research and development laboratories in the U.S. national innovation system. Michael Crow and Barry Bozeman offer policy makers and scientists a blueprint for making more informed decisions about how to best utilize and develop the capabilities of these facilities. Some labs, such as Bell Labs, Westinghouse, and Eastman Kodak, have been global players since the turn of the century. Others, such as Los Alamos National Laboratory, have been mainstays of the military/energy industrial complex since they evolved in the 1940s. These and other institutions have come to serve as the infrastructure upon which a range of industries have relied and have had a tremendous impact on U.S. social and economic history. Michael Crow and Barry Bozeman illustrate the histories, missions, structure, and behavior of individual laboratories, and explore the policy contexts in which they are embedded. In studying this large and varied collection of labs, Crow, Bozeman, and their colleagues develop a new framework for understanding the structure and behavior of laboratories that also provides a basis for rationalizing federal science and technology policy to create more effective laboratories. The book draws upon interviews and surveys collected from thousands of scientists, administrators, and policy makers, and features boxed "lab windows" throughout that provide detailed information on the variety of laboratories active in the U.S. national innovation system. Limited by Design addresses a range of questions in order to enable policy makers, university administrators, and scientists to plan effectively for the future of research and development.

How America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions. During the nineteenth century, heroic individual inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell created entirely new industries while achieving widespread fame. However, by 1927, a New York Times editorial suggested that teams of corporate scientists at General Electric, AT&T, and DuPont had replaced the solitary "garret inventor" as the wellspring of invention. But these inventors never disappeared. In this book, Eric Hintz argues that lesser-known inventors such as Chester Carlson (Xerox photocopier), Samuel Ruben (Duracell batteries), and Earl Tupper (Tupperware) continued to develop important technologies throughout the twentieth century. Moreover, Hintz explains how independent inventors gradually fell from public view as corporate brands increasingly became associated with high-tech innovation. Focusing on the years from 1890 to 1950, Hintz documents how American independent inventors competed (and sometimes partnered) with their corporate rivals, adopted a variety of flexible commercialization strategies, established a series of short-lived professional groups, lobbied for fairer patent laws, and mobilized for two world wars. After 1950, the experiences of independent inventors generally mirrored the patterns of their predecessors, and they continued to be overshadowed during corporate R&D's postwar golden age. The independents enjoyed a resurgence, however, at the turn of the twenty-first century, as Apple's Steve Jobs and Shark Tank's Lori Greiner heralded a new generation of heroic inventor-entrepreneurs. By recovering the stories of a group once considered extinct, Hintz shows that independent inventors have long been—and remain—an important source of new technologies.

How a team of musicians, engineers, computer scientists, and psychologists developed computer music as an academic field and ushered in the era of digital music. In the 1960s, a team of Stanford musicians, engineers, computer scientists, and psychologists used computing in an entirely novel way: to produce and manipulate sound and create the sonic basis of new musical compositions. This group of interdisciplinary researchers at the nascent Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA, pronounced “karma”) helped to develop computer music as an academic field, invent the technologies that underlie it, and usher in the age of digital music. In The Sound of Innovation, Andrew Nelson chronicles the history of CCRMA, tracing its origins in Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory through its present-day influence on Silicon Valley and digital music groups worldwide. Nelson emphasizes CCRMA's interdisciplinarity, which stimulates creativity at the intersections of fields; its commitment to open sharing and users; and its pioneering commercial engagement. He shows that Stanford's outsized influence on the emergence of digital music came from the intertwining of these three modes, which brought together diverse supporters with different aims around a field of shared interest. Nelson thus challenges long-standing assumptions about the divisions between art and science, between the humanities and technology, and between academic research and commercial applications, showing how the story of a small group of musicians reveals substantial insights about innovation. Nelson draws on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with digital music pioneers; the book's website provides access to original historic documents and other material.

This book demonstrates how innovation is used to create wealth, productivity growth, and improved quality of life

This book is about inventions and innovation in U.S. Federal Laboratories. The inventions discussed are defined by the technology transfer mechanism known by the term invention disclosures and are innovations that are the output of the technology transfer process. The demonstrated positive relationships in the book's model are the groundwork for suggesting not only a rethinking of the extant empirical research, within the context of a knowledge production function but also a refocusing of U.S. technology policy in support of technology transfer from Federal Laboratories.