Bell Labs invested in research that would bring payoff 20+ years in the future. That's in part because they were a quasi-monopoly. (Also because there was less pressure back then on execs to focus on short-term stock prices.)
It's also because Bell Labs ran a lot on government contracts and grants. The government CAN look 20+ years in the future. And it does.
You can see the same effect in pharma today. Pharma R&D develops drugs that will hit the clinic in the next 5-10 years at most. The true basic research of identifying targets and understanding cancer/Alzheimer's mechanisms to launch future drugs -- that's all funded by the government.
I would also ask how we could recreate another exemplar in that space, DARPA. Now of course DARPA is alive and kicking, but what about another DARPA, say in Europe?
The two organizations did have different missions, with DARPA being mostly an investor while Bell Labs was mostly a practitioner.
The question that springs to mind is, why did Bell Labs decay while DARPA did not?
Bell Labs invested in research that would bring payoff 20+ years in the future. That's in part because they were a quasi-monopoly. (Also because there was less pressure back then on execs to focus on short-term stock prices.)
It's also because Bell Labs ran a lot on government contracts and grants. The government CAN look 20+ years in the future. And it does.
You can see the same effect in pharma today. Pharma R&D develops drugs that will hit the clinic in the next 5-10 years at most. The true basic research of identifying targets and understanding cancer/Alzheimer's mechanisms to launch future drugs -- that's all funded by the government.