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Why Bell Labs Worked

Or, how MBA culture killed Bell Labs

From "[Bell] suggested the basic lines of research, furnished the financial resources, and then allowed his associates to receive the credit for many of the inventions that resulted." Kelly seems to have believed that the desire to impress your boss was a corrosive force, and so new discoveries and inventions were steadily percolated up to him and other leadership layer-by-layer one to two weeks at a time. It can try to provide a meaningful simulacrum of that space and community, which is why I’m so excited about programs like 1517’s Flux that invests $100k in people, no questions asked and lets them explore for a few months without demanding KPIs or instantaneous progress.

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