Supposing it is true that in the future, higher educations collapses to a currently unrecognizable form and large companies become untenable, what will drive innovation? Who will fund say building a quantum computer?
Still, the contrasts between these organizations and Bell Labs are crucial. “This was a company that literally dumped technology on our country,” the physics historian Michael Riordan has said of Bell Labs. “I don’t think we’ll see an organization with that kind of record ever again.” The expectation that, say, Google or Apple could behave like Bell Labs—that such companies could invest heavily in basic or applied research and then sprinkle the results freely around California—seems misplaced, if not naive. Such companies don’t exist as part of a highly regulated national public trust. They exist as part of our international capital markets. They are superb at producing a specific and limited range of technology products.
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“I’ve often said to my old friends that we were very lucky we got to work there, in an environment that I don’t think will ever exist again,” remarks Dick Frenkiel, who worked on the first generation of cellular technology. “It’s hard to say something will never happen again. But with the monopoly gone, with the whole concept of monopoly essentially discredited, how could there ever be a place like that again?”
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That perceived natural monopoly wasn’t only justified by the phone system’s technological complexity and interdependence; it was also—in an argument that telephone executives made over and over again—a matter of economics. With one company in effect serving the country’s phone customers, some parts of the phone business that were highly profitable, such as long-distance service, could subsidize other aspects that were less profitable, such as local calling. Profits from high-paying corporate customers, moreover, could subsidize service to residential customers. Profits from dense urban areas could subsidize expansion into sparse rural areas. All in all, this kind of “averaging,” as it was sometimes called, helped make telephone service available and affordable for most Americans.
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In testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, Bill Baker asserted that “the notion that Bell Laboratories could endure and function away from AT&T, Western Electric, and the operating integrated Bell System would be laughable were it not so sinister and so ominous.” It was an argument like the one a gifted child might make in favor of preserving his parents’ marriage.
My understanding of economics would beg to differ with that conclusion, but I don't think we'll get anywhere arguing economics. However, here is something that seems faulty in the text you quoted.
The expectation that, say, Google or Apple could behave like Bell Labs—that such companies could invest heavily in basic or applied research and then sprinkle the results freely around California—seems misplaced, if not naive
I think Google has, indeed, been investing in applied research and sprinkling the results freely around. Off the top of my head, without thinking, there is Go (the language), and the fact that they employ Guido van Rossum. And their developers can (at least sometimes) use 10% of their time on whatever (including open source) - so if 1% of developers' time is actually spent on open source, Google is investing 1% of its payroll money (i.e., hugely) in "sprinking technology around."
I bet I could come up with a bunch more stuff they do "for free," if I thought about it more.
And I bet Google has plenty of money to throw around - a certain amount of research is just "pocket change" to them. I suspect that's pretty much the way things worked at Bell Labs, at least in terms of "free technology" that was being dispersed.
Of course, you can increase the level of innovative research through patents (and also kill it, if you do it wrong).
Really bad examples. Neither of those is research, basic or applied.
Whereas my "really bad examples" are much more in line with the "only monopolies have so much money they just give stuff away" premise of the whole discussion.
Karnaugh Maps, Transistor + MOSFET, Unix, C (this spans at least 1 to 2 years of any EE/CS curriculum). They won (at least) 2 nobel prizes in physics.
From IBM research: LASIK, Networking, DRAM, Leo Esaki + 2 other physics nobel prizes, fractal geometry, ATM, relational databases, vacuum tubes etc.
I don't think a comparison is even possible. (Not to take a cheap shot at anyone - Google has been the single biggest contributor to the delta between my parents' and my generation - they didn't have internet + IR to answer their questions and I have used their services for a large part of my life and they are doing some sweet-sweet things all the time)
Overall, the formula seems to be the same - collect super-smart people, give them freedom and see the magic happen. From what I see, the PR boost each of those contributions brought might have resulted in a net positive (not to mention, being a potential destination for people with immense knowledge of their domains has to be a HR win).
404 No Such Agency
Having a large amount of marketshare != a monopoly.
Lots of people insist on using the term for both things. I don't know why. But even if you are one of those people, surely you will see there there is a fundamental difference between those two things.
For the sake of this discussion, it would be necessary to differentiate between them.
The point is a market that allows lots of profit for an extended time period. This doesn't have to produce a Bell Labs, but it sure seems helpful.