Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel (Hardcover)

by Narain Gehani (Author) "THIS WAS ONE of the remarks made by a manager while welcoming me to Bell Labs..." (more)
Key Phrases: unit staffers, ode object database, research senior vice president, Murray Hill, Silicon Valley, New Jersey (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
... fascinating and highly recommended account ... -- Midwest Book Review

Fascinating book describing technology and people in change and under stress ... captures a short magical moment ... -- Stephen G. Eick, CEO/CoFounder, Visintuit

If you're in Information Technology, it's a must read. -- Peter H. Salus, author of the best selling A Quarter Century of Unix

[Gehani is a gifted author]. Competition has come at a tremendous cost - our country has lost its crown jewel. -- Robert M. Siegmann, ACM Ubiquity Magazine, March 4-10, 2003

Product Description
Bell Labs, the greatest research lab of the twentieth century, has been called America's national treasure and the crown jewel of AT&T and Lucent. To scientists all over the world, pursuing research at Bell Labs has long been a dream because of its brilliant scientists, numerous inventions, academic freedom, and plentiful resources. But now, forced by the marketplace, competition, and economic conditions, the world's most prestigious research lab is in the midst of radical cultural change.

Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel tells the fascinating story of the transition Bell Labs undergoing as it adapts to new business conditions. After AT&T's settlement of a government anti-trust lawsuit, the boom years of basic research started to end. A much smaller AT&T, still a giant company, was thrust into the competitive world. The change, slow at first, picked up pace in the 1990s following the next breakup of AT&T, which created Lucent, Bell Labs' new parent. After a few good years, Lucent found itself in financial difficulty in a very tough telecommunications market. Lucent responded by breaking up into smaller companies, which led to a smaller Bell Labs. Lucent's worsening financial condition forced it to downsize with Bell Labs sharing the pain. Bell Labs is now being forced to move faster and further towards helping Lucent's business needs.

Moving from university-style (basic) research to industrial (applied) research is much more difficult than going from industrial research to basic research because industrial research puts constraints on scientists while basic research frees them to explore new frontiers. Bell Labs researchers, who once were free to focus on innovation, research excellence, and prizes, now have to worry about business relevance. The culture of lifetime employment is gone and the pendulum has swung from basic to applied research.

Narain Gehani worked at Bell Labs for twenty-three years from 1978 to 2001. He was there during the critical years when AT&T changed from a monopoly to a competitive company. He was there when AT&T split up again and handed Bell Labs to Lucent. He was there during the rise and fall of Lucent. He was a witness to and participant in the changes in Bell Labs as its parent went from a million-employee company (AT&T) to a company (Lucent) that now has less than fifty thousand employees.

Narain Gehani, in his first non-technical book, shares his insights about Bell Labs and its culture and tells its glorious history. He describes the cultural differences between Research and the business units, the different research models and the challenges facing Bell Labs in the twenty first century. Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel is full of interesting and amusing anecdotes. Narain Gehani's tale of a corporate crown jewel will keep you riveted to reading about a way of life possibly gone forever.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 258 pages
• Publisher: Silicon Press; 1 edition (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0929306279
• ISBN-13: 978-0929306278
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #369,800 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An insider's look at an honored institution, January 3, 2003

By	Thomas G. Farley (West Sacramento, CA United States) - See all my reviews

SHORT REVIEW

What happened to Bell Labs? This book answers that question. Gehani shows how the Labs survives but struggles. He thinks Bell Labs can continue but only by quickly changing culture and direction.

Throughout his book Gehani provides fresh and important information. We get a rare look into Bell Labs' life, the tremendous freedom to pursue independent, high quality research. Even more so than academia, where tenure provides a backstop, publish or perish was a constant watch phrase. Do your research, whatever that may be, but make sure the scientific community recognizes it and accepts it. Published papers, not profit, was the expectation. As the emphasis changes to helping Lucent's business units the Labs cannot retain its old character, indeed, the old Labs is probably gone forever. Glory can come back to Bell Labs but it will probably be in a different way, helping Lucent first, then society at large. Reinventing itself may prove the Labs most difficult project, still, it may surprise us, as its discoveries and inventions have surprised us for more than seventy five years. Let's hope.

DETAILS

Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel, chronicles Narain Gehani's twenty three years at Bell Laboratories. It is a welcome and needed addition to telephone history. Gehani started work in 1978, when the Labs was fully subsidized and owned by AT&T. He left in 2001, after the Lab switched parent companies, split apart many times, and researchers reduced two-thirds.

AT&T's telephone monopoly generously funded Bell Labs from its 1925 creation until the Bell System's 1984 divestiture. Each customer's bill sent something to the Labs; slightly higher rates subsidizing research and development. This excellent arrangement lasted nearly sixty years, Bell Labs contributing mightily to building the world's best telephone system. After1984 AT&T no longer had guaranteed revenue; Bell Labs withered as its parent wandered and floundered financially. Lucent's recent control has not helped.

Chapter 1, I Have A Job For Life!, summarizes Gehani's Labs' career, Laboratory accomplishments, its history, and the desire researchers felt to work there. Chapter 2, The Crown Jewel, describes the Labs' confusing ownership, spin-offs, and name changes. Gehani details relations and history between the Labs and Lucent, Bellcore, Telecordia, NCR, Avaya, and Agere. After explaining the Labs external structure, he lays out its internal structure in Chapter 3, Life at Murray Hill. We learn how researchers, managers, and development people get along. Chapter 4, Looking For Dung But Finding Gold reveals how often pure research leads to important discoveries.

Gehani's writing turns from Old Labs to New, as Lucent ownership and funding demanded change from pure to applied research. In Chapter 5, Do We Work For The Same Company?, corporate culture differences between Lab researchers and Lucent business people block cooperating. Chapter 6, What Are You Doing For Us?, finds researchers struggling to pioneer science while producing relevant work for Lucent. Chapter 7, Bell Labs Goes West, details the well intended but doomed expansion into Silicon Valley. Chapter 8, Maps On Us, describes a successful web development project between Labs researchers and Lucent business units. It points to a collaborative direction the Labs may have to take. Chapter 9, Most Fantastic Place! recaps Bell Labs bygone university like atmosphere and the changes needed to transform the Labs into something quite different: a market oriented research institution.

Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel by Narain Gehani, Silicon Press, 2003, 258 pages, hardcover, ISBN 0-929306-27-9. Consecutively numbered, descriptive endnotes. Good index. No photographs. Minor, first edition layout problems. Easily read type with plenty of white space. Recommended .

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Anecdotal, disorganized and poorly written., February 3, 2006

By	Jeff (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

I can't remember reading a more poorly written book since grade school. I read the whole book solely so I could write this review honestly. Mr. Gehani appears to have slapped together every single moment he can remember about his time at BL, inserted 9 chapter headings at random, and called it a book. His sentence structure is consistent with a 7th grade reading level (7th grade by US standards, so basically, a normal 8 year old). I found myself frequently saying, "What the hell is the point of this?" after each chapter.

There have been many brilliant scientists at BL; Mr. Gehani does not shed any light on the fascinating scientific culture that produced so many Nobelists. He does however, shed light on each and every mundane managerial decision he had to make. Again, I found myself frequently saying, "What the hell is the point of this?" after each chapter.

It's truly sad that this book exists. So many other writers could have done a better job and added something to libraries around America. I wouldn't even use this book for a grade school book report. It truly is that worthless.

My review of this book has since been critized. As PhD student in computational physics and chemistry, my failure to "get" this book is not for lack of understanding of the research that went on at Bell Labs, but perhaps a lack of understanding of why anyone would write this poorly about mundane events.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mildly interesting, September 6, 2003

By	Shannon Gaw (Roswell, GA USA) - See all my reviews

Crown Jewels describes the evolution of Bell Labs from the gravy-train days under the Ma Bell monopoly to its struggling to stay alive under the faltering Lucent. Aside from back and forth chronology that confused me at times, I found the book to be well-written. However, I don't know that the material is worthy of a book. The entire volume is really summed up in one sentence: Life at Bell Labs was like academia until after the divestiture, and then no one at either Bell Labs, AT&T, the RBOCs, or Lucent really knew how to harness its energy. As somewhat of an industry insider, I was hoping for more details of its products and innovations, but such information was hit-and-miss -- the author talked about "MapsOnUs" in detail, but quickly blew over other products like VoIP and Softswitch.