Some time in (I think) the past few months, someone posted a link to an AT&T or Bell Labs executive talking to a team of his engineers about the state of innovation at the phone company. The context was the 1970s, and a number of innovations -- direct dialing and touch-tone dialing were I believe two of them. It transpired that these had been. developed decades before deployment -- direct dialing being a 19th century invention, touch tone from the 1920s or 30s, as I recall.

The upshot being that innovation had already slowed tremendously.

The video begins, approximately, with the speaker relating a story of how an earlier executive had announced to a previous group, "Gentlemen, this company was destroyed last night".

If this rings any. bells, Ma or otherwise, I'd appreciate the link or reference.