In this piece, I dive into exactly how Bell Labs ensured that their researchers were working on the right problems. This piece will be the first in a series examining what modern applied research orgs can learn from the great dragons of industrial R&D — places like Bell Labs, GE Research Laboratory, and DuPont’s research department.
Institutions like these not only had Nobel prizes to their names, but each — even though they’ve diminished for various reasons — was quite profitable too. They had their differences, but they all stumbled upon many aspects of managing their research operations that were rather similar. The managers of these organizations — and other researchers at the time — often felt the management decisions they made were common sense rather than some great discovery.
However, these common-sense decisions are things we often don’t do today – but almost certainly should.
