What Do Harvard, MIT, Princeton, NYU, And Yale Have In Common?

From Claude Shannon and Information Theory to Arno Penzias and the discovery of Cosmic Background Radiation, some of the best minds in the world have worked on future building research at Bell Labs over the years.

For those not familiar with the rich history of Bell Labs, this is where the transistor, the laser, the Unix operating system and C language, solar cells, cellular networks, and many other technologies that are fundamental to the very existence of tech giants like Google, Amazon, Intel, and Apple were developed. Indeed, every iPhone, Google search, Facebook profile and Amazon order relies to a significant extent on innovations originally developed at Bell Labs.

As validation of this world changing research and development, nine Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories:

• 1937: Demonstrating the wave nature of matter.
• 1956: Inventing the first transistors.
• 1977: Improved understanding of the structure of glass and magnetic materials.
• 1978: Discovering cosmic microwave background radiation.
• 1997: Developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.
• 1998: Discovering and explaining the fractional quantum Hall effect.
• 2009: Charge-coupled device (CCD) semiconductor imaging sensors.
• 2014: Super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.
• 2018: Optical tweezers and their application to biological systems.

To illustrate how profound these breakthroughs were, consider just a single example here; members of the team that invented the transistor at Bell Labs eventually went out to California to sow the seeds for the founding of Fairchild and Intel, and eventually, Silicon Valley and Venture Capitalism as we know it today. Such is the magnitude of the impact Bell Labs has had on todays innovation and technology landscape.

A brief summary of just some of the fundamental technologies developed at Bell Labs includes:

• Data Networking
• The Transistor
• Cellular Technology
• The Solar Cell
• The Laser
• Communications Satellites
• Unix Operating System and C Language
• The Digital Signal Processor

With regards to how Bell Labs was able to create and sustain this innovation model, Walter Isaacson aptly comments in Jon Gertner's wonderful book The Idea Factory, "the lesson of Bell Labs is that most feats of sustained innovation cannot and do not occur in an iconic garage or the workshop of an ingenious inventor," but instead "occur when people of diverse talents and mind-sets and expertise are brought together, preferably in close physical proximity where they can have frequent meetings and serendipitous encounters."

And the architects of twentieth century innovation not only placed these diverse talents in close proximity to each other, they set up offices and labs in such a way that practically guaranteed interaction. It was hard for a materials scientist to avoid walking past a theoretical physicists office on the way to the lunch room for example. Or for a chemist to make it to a conference room without a chance encounter with a biologist. This cross pollination of ideas and backgrounds, along with the rich and varied talents only the deepest pockets and most exciting and prestigious innovation environments can provide, are just some of the aspects of this highly successful and earliest of true technology innovation centers.

What can today's enterprise innovation centers learn from the Bell Labs model? What frameworks and processes make sense in today's world? Are there methods and procedures that can be repurposed to further foster innovation among the Amazons, Googles, Microsofts, and even the smaller startups that constitute todays technology hubs? I think it's definitely worth finding out.

And to that end, the MIT Enterprise Forum is hosting its follow up event to the American Innovation and the Bell Labs model in the 21st Century - Part 1 Event held back in 2018. Come join us on November 12, 2020, to listen to our distinguished guest Jelena Kovacevic, Ph.D., Dean of the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University as we host a fireside chat on this worthy and still highly relevant topic. Both Jelena and I worked at Bell Labs during our careers and I look forward to participating in what is sure to be an engaging and lively conversation.

Tickets and registration for the event can be found here. 

Feel free to use the code "DanMITBellLabs" to receive a discount on the registration fee.

For a little perspective on what it was like to work at Bell Labs, below are some photos I took on a recent trip back to Holmdel:

The Bell Labs Holmdel building from the rear.

The spacious atrium looked even better back in the day with full height trees and a library.

Bell Labs honors its Nobel Laureates

And finally, a short movie that will give you quick tour of the facility as it looks today.

Daniel O'Sullivan is the CEO and Founder of Gyst Technologies - a company that develops advanced speech interfaces for Intelligent Voice Assistants and other Voice Channels. Dan attended New York University Tandon School of Engineering for his graduate work and is now a Director on the NYU PAA board. He also worked at Bell Labs for five years as a Member of Technical Staff before founding the first of his software technology startups. Dan is also Vice Chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum New York City.