Journal #4 by Jules

Jules (Lu Tao)

In Jon Gertner’s article “True Innovation” (Feb. 25, 2012), he states that why innovations is important by a research about Bell Labs. Bell Labs as an innovation factory created a lot of popular products. The manager of Bell Lab have several method to manage the labs for a great work environment. 

As far as I am consider, Bell Lab have a good business model. As an innovation factory, Bell Labs have a lot of famous scientists. These scientists created enormous amount useful products in the world. The transistor, for example, invented in 1947, which is now the building block of all digital products and contemporary life. It is not looks like a modern technology company that have a clearly target and need consider with balance of profit. It had a large and dependable income ensured by its monopoly status because only one of its product can gain a great deal of profit for the world. 

The one of Kelly’s philosophy, physical proximity, is a great idea. Kelly think physical proximity can have some magical effects which phone calls couldn’t got. They mixed together different fields workers such as physicists, metallurgists and electrical engineers. It means the specialists in theory, experimentation and manufacturing can work closer. He even use architectural to approach his philosophy. The design principle of the building is people can interact with each other. Sometimes, people may thought two fields are independent; in fact they are not. Logic can use for almost fields. When the specialists in theory, experimentation and manufacturing can work together, any one problem of these can be solved quickly because they can check faster where the problem are. If In other case, we might need wait longer that they need communicate with other to explain the problem one by one. In other hand, this is a reason why team work can got more effects. People cannot concentrate on thing in a long time; after the main time, they might easy to take some mistake. However, if it is team work, everyone can got some time to relax.