If indoor cellular receivers and Evros catch on, would the Labs rejoin the innovation vanguard? Competition among telecom companies selling femtocells will likely be fierce. And as for Evros--which has been rechristened the "OmniAccess Nonstop Laptop Guardian"--nothing is more difficult than creating from scratch a market for new business products. "I have another project called Yangtze," Kim says, referring to a whispered-about telecom-equipment venture that is due out next year; he thinks it has the potential to fundamentally alter the way wireless and wireline carriers deliver information and communication services (though he declines to offer specifics). But even with a promising pipeline, Bell Labs confronts long-term issues. Its population of scientists is aging, and its main location--Murray Hill, New Jersey, just outside New York--makes it difficult to lure the talent that's now drawn to Silicon Valley and Route 128.
"I'm cautiously optimistic, but I've always been cautiously optimistic," Kim says of the Labs. "I will acknowledge the challenges we're facing. They're not small." Most Wall Street observers second this notion, pointing to a dim short-term outlook for Alcatel-Lucent. Analyst Per Lindberg of Dresdner Kleinwort has even begun to call for the spin-off of Bell Labs. I ask Kim if he thinks the era of the big research lab is over. "If I believed that," he says flatly, "I wouldn't be here." He has taken this job not because it is easy, he says, but because it is difficult.
Lately, Kim has been thinking about the Black-Scholes model, a set of mathematical equations formulated in the 1970s that forever changed how markets operate by providing a way to price options. In simplest terms, Black-Scholes helps financial institutions reach more precise calculations of risk and reward. Kim may have developed his innovation cube as a nifty visual for a speech, but he soon realized that by plotting Bell Labs' innovative endeavors in the three-dimensional box--based, again, on impact, time to market, and process--he could understand whether his bets were sensibly distributed. Perhaps the cube could do for innovation what Black-Scholes did for the financial markets.
There's no proven model, though, for a well-balanced innovation portfolio. Is your company pursuing too many near-term projects? Is it overestimating their impact? How much should you spend on internal research as opposed to buying new technologies? Research dollars are increasingly limited, and prioritizing ideas is crucial. So Kim has asked his best scientists to address what he calls "a really, really tough problem": quantifying innovations in a mathematical formula. "It doesn't have to be perfect. But if we can create a model that is used by a lot of people as a common tool, that would be a great contribution."
This is not just an example of the kind of "crazy" risks that Kim is willing to take. It's also emblematic of the abstract, ambitious long-shot projects that only a large corporate research operation like Bell Labs would attempt. Kim can search for a formula to define innovation, precisely because he has at his disposal a slew of world-class mathematicians. He can test whatever proposals or theories emerge with distinctive rigor because the Labs' "feedback loops" filter ideas through many minds in a variety of scientific disciplines. An independent entrepreneurial venture wouldn't have the resources--financial or human--to apply to such a project.
One could, of course, view this formula-seeking exercise as self-serving: The scientists at an embattled multidisciplinary lab are working hard to prove the utility of a multidisciplinary lab. Yet it's hard to argue that over its long history Bell Labs and its peers haven't transformed society by solving problems that previously seemed impossible to solve. Kim is quick to point out that plenty of mind-bogglingly daunting challenges are ahead that will require transformational efforts. The future of communications, he says, will be defined by an industry yet to be created. Not the kind of business that simply delivers information (like Alcatel-Lucent's) or organizes information (like Google's) but one that manages the rising tide of information so that it doesn't overwhelm us. The greatest business and engineering challenge on the horizon, he says, is "to organize information in a way that allows you to live the way you want to live, to take time off with your kids without fear you're going to miss out on something." In his view, this is precisely the kind of work--unwieldy, complex, onerous--that is suited to the strengths of a big scientific organization.
Kim is an optimist, both in regard to technology and to life. He knows from personal experience that the future can be better than the past. The innovator, he says, should never lose sight of the actual goal of innovation: not new technology, but what new technology can deliver to us--awareness, insight, interaction. And freedom.?
Jon Gertner is writing a book about Bell Labs, which is in the New Jersey town where he grew up.
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Recent Comments | 13 Total
February 15, 2008 at 2:20pm by Anand Sanwal
This article is pretty interesting and Jeong Kim who heads up the group is undoubtedly a great innovator. Some of Kim's interesting insights & actions as the head of Bell Labs include his use of a venture capital type approach to innovation as "Kim has grouped the Labs' more audacious research efforts under what's now called Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, or ALV."
This skunk-works for innovation makes a lot of sense. And several interesting ideas are emerging from these efforts which the article details.
But the article is prone to a few flights of hyperbole including Kim's theory on innovation which is described as a cube. Although calling it dimensions and visualizing it as a 3-D box sounds impressive, there is nothing particularly amazing about this. This is a framework that many management consultants have come up with and hawked to their clients or that strategic venture groups have come up with. It's a simple matter of setting up a x, y, and z axis and putting each dimension down and then plotting points to your heart's content. It's a slight variation on some long-held views of innovation and not innovative in of itself. The idea that innovation needs to be managed as a portfolio of options is spot on but again, nothing particularly earth-shattering about that. The framework is pretty standard stuff.
The second example of hype is Kim and his idea that you can quantify innovation in a mathematical formula. This sounds like a nice luxurious pursuit when you have a bunch of mathematicians on staff as you mention, but the portfolio view that a framework would offer is probably enough to help prioritize innovative opportunities. I see little to no prospect for a generally applicable mathematical formula for innovation coming to light, and I'm not sure this makes much sense to pursue. For innovation, the old adage that "it is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong" seems to be pretty spot on. Management and innovation as science is inherently impossible no matter how interesting/alluring the prospect of this is. There is no way to say "Add this + this" and you'll have a great company or you'll have an innovation. I'm sure such a formula will result in a book which will sell thousands of copies because this type of mathematical elixir is what some are hoping for. But its value is dubious.
Regards,
Anand Sanwal
Author, Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management
Investile Dysfunction blog - www.corporateportfoliomgmt.typepad.com
December 30, 2008 at 6:35pm by Michael Plishka
Interesting article though I tend to agree with Anand's comments. However, mathematics and models help give us insights into behaviors/phenomena even if they are only partially correct:
http://zenstorming.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/the-mathematics-of-innovatio...
Insights are always a good thing.
January 8, 2009 at 5:31pm by Will Meysing
I smiled as I read the article on the 12 most creative people of 2008. It was my reaction to reading about someone else who is proclaiming why others should join this secret club.
It is a group of members with invisible activities, rituals and club by-laws.
An idea – comes to mind – because of our biochemistry and neuron specialty centers – connecting together – into a triangulated structure that causes our cognitive function.
All we can do is attempt to create models (3-D Box) that are incomplete – inaccurate and un-functional – to share with each other as by-products of interpretation. It is what you cannot construct with models and/or math – that we so want to comprehend.
But a dog whistle can be heard by your pet but not by the human population. We cannot – as humans – be a member of that canine hearing club.
The same with talking about a 3-D Box and its mathematical formula for the creativity process. The attempt is flawed from the get-go because creativity does not need a terrestrial fulcrum – or gravity – or an up side and a down. It does not need any particular language or scientific rules based on our society. Like a duck decoy by the lake – it is an image of imitation – and if it tricks a live duck to interpret its reality as friends of a feather – the hunter gets a duck dinner. You need a model with math that encircles and creates focus on what we cannot yet comprehend – with formulas that regulate what rules of language, equation and graphic model (duck decoys) we can use because it is all up to the “real duck” and the universal codes of function whether such efforts – as proclaimed in this article – will ever amount to something applicable to sustaining our daily lives—like a tasty duck dinner.
William C. Meysing, President
Corporate Builders, Inc.
January 8, 2009 at 5:31pm by Will Meysing
I smiled as I read the article on the 12 most creative people of 2008. It was my reaction to reading about someone else who is proclaiming why others should join this secret club.
It is a group of members with invisible activities, rituals and club by-laws.
An idea – comes to mind – because of our biochemistry and neuron specialty centers – connecting together – into a triangulated structure that causes our cognitive function.
All we can do is attempt to create models (3-D Box) that are incomplete – inaccurate and un-functional – to share with each other as by-products of interpretation. It is what you cannot construct with models and/or math – that we so want to comprehend.
But a dog whistle can be heard by your pet but not by the human population. We cannot – as humans – be a member of that canine hearing club.
The same with talking about a 3-D Box and its mathematical formula for the creativity process. The attempt is flawed from the get-go because creativity does not need a terrestrial fulcrum – or gravity – or an up side and a down. It does not need any particular language or scientific rules based on our society. Like a duck decoy by the lake – it is an image of imitation – and if it tricks a live duck to interpret its reality as friends of a feather – the hunter gets a duck dinner. You need a model with math that encircles and creates focus on what we cannot yet comprehend – with formulas that regulate what rules of language, equation and graphic model (duck decoys) we can use because it is all up to the “real duck” and the universal codes of function whether such efforts – as proclaimed in this article – will ever amount to something applicable to sustaining our daily lives—like a tasty duck dinner.
William C. Meysing, President
Corporate Builders, Inc.
January 8, 2009 at 5:35pm by Will Meysing
I smiled as I read the article on the 12 most creative people of 2008. It was my reaction to reading about someone else who is proclaiming why others should join this secret club.
It is a group of members with invisible activities, rituals and club by-laws.
An idea – comes to mind – because of our biochemistry and neuron specialty centers – connecting together – into a triangulated structure that causes our cognitive function.
All we can do is attempt to create models (3-D Box) that are incomplete – inaccurate and un-functional – to share with each other as by-products of interpretation. It is what you cannot construct with models and/or math – that we so want to comprehend.
But a dog whistle can be heard by your pet but not by the human population. We cannot – as humans – be a member of that canine hearing club.
The same with talking about a 3-D Box and its mathematical formula for the creativity process. The attempt is flawed from the get-go because creativity does not need a terrestrial fulcrum – or gravity – or an up side and a down. It does not need any particular language or scientific rules based on our society. Like a duck decoy by the lake – it is an image of imitation – and if it tricks a live duck to interpret its reality as friends of a feather – the hunter gets a duck dinner. You need a model with math that encircles and creates focus on what we cannot yet comprehend – with formulas that regulate what rules of language, equation and graphic model (duck decoys) we can use because it is all up to the “real duck” and the universal codes of function whether such efforts – as proclaimed in this article – will ever amount to something applicable to sustaining our daily lives—like a tasty duck dinner.
William C. Meysing, President
Corporate Builders, Inc.
January 29, 2009 at 2:12am by Brad Arnold
I have trouble believing people like Kim who preach "innovation" because of the difficulty in approaching people with "non-consensis reality" concepts. For instance, there is a private company in California called Magnetic Power Inc (www.magneticpowerinc.com) that is developing a solid state power generator (wrap a solenoidal coil around a magnet-the magnetic gradient can be exploited for more energy than it takes to power the coil-MPI exceeded break even in 2004). Good luck trying to interest people in this silver bullet energy technology (I am not an agent nor associated with MPI, but am a global warming activist). How about a technology to convert CO2 from coal-fired power plants into fuel profitably (4th generation fuel production)? "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." --Albert Einstein. But: All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident. -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). Innovation is entertaining and supporting "truth" before it is accepted as self-evident, but do you know how hard it is to find people who are interested in a truth until it is consensis reality? Frankly, I think many people pay lip service to "innovation," but really they just want to continue with the same old thinking and will reject any truth that isn't accepted as self-evident.