The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

In the decades between 1920 and 1980, Bell Laboratories in New Jersey was the most innovative and productive institution in the United States.  Long before Silicon Valley, Bell Labs attracted the best and brightest, and fomented the genesis of most of today’s technology.  In The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (The Penguin Press; $29.95), New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner offers a compelling and eye-opening look at the unique magic of Bell Labs—and American innovation at its best.

A citadel of science and scholarship and a hotbed of creative thinking not since duplicated, Bell Labs employed nearly 15,000 people in its peak.  These ingenious, often eccentric scientists would become revolutionaries and even legends as they developed technologies like radars, lasers, transistors, satellite and mobile phones that can all be traced back to Bell Labs. The Idea Factory reveals the forces that set off this explosion of innovation.  As Gertner illustrates, Bell Labs combined the best aspect of both academic and corporate worlds: hiring the brightest and usually the youngest minds, creating a culture and architecture that forced employees in different fields to work together, with intellectual freedom and little pressure to create moneymaking innovations; at the same time, they aggressively pursued marketable technology.  Many of today’s researchers and business leaders seek to emulate this model, but haven’t yet been able to arrive at the same balance that made Bell Labs so successful.

Join us as Jon Gertner delves into this unique community of scientists and developers for a lecture and book signing.  Refreshments will be served.

Many thanks to Tom Williams at Mendham Books [http://www.mendhambooks.com/] for his help in organizing this lecture.