Journal 4

In Jon Gertner’s article “True innovation,” (Feb. 25, 2012) he states that Bell Labs produce the true innovations by architectural, aspirational, organizational approaches, free environment, and enormous time. Bell Labs are important for American innovations because that innovative companies cannot contribute true innovations, and it was the most innovative organization around the globe. In Bell Labs, a relatively small number of scientists and engineers came out with such substantial innovations during a relatively short time. Mervin Kelly who took charge of the culture of creativity explained how his laboratory operated. Mervin Kelly used architectural, aspirational, organizational methods to practice his essential belief,” institute of creative technology”. Freedom and time are another two significant elements in Mervin Kelly’s innovation strategy. Bell Labs changed world through its own way of innovations.
 

Major of people would say that Bell Labs is so old fashioned and cannot keep up with the business. However, I claim that what Bell Labs does can always influence the business because it is hard to realize how true innovations happen.
 

Everyone is talking about innovations now. If an enterprise goes bankrupt, people will say this enterprise is short of innovations. This comment is right. Innovation is the most crucial thing in any enterprise, especially in technical field. Nevertheless, many American companies like Google, Facebook turn innovation into “fast food”. They have new products every quarter and give their products a title of “all new”. How many parts of their products are new? Maybe the only thing new is name because these enterprises only use the concept of innovation not the substance of innovation.

On the contrary, the true innovations in Bell Labs have a huge difference.  From my perspective, time is the most critical element in innovation. Roman was not built in a day. Innovations are a spark of thought but before the spark, it needs long-time accumulation and incubation. For instance, the invention of the laser can be dated to 1958, and the first DVD which had a laser appeared in 1995. It take almost 40 years to make the innovation Bell Labs came out into business. The time has an undeniable effect on innovations.
 

It is easy to understand that companies put profit on the first place. Indeed, innovation is the best way to make profit. For large-scale companies, they have enough money but don’t have enough patience. If more companies would pay more time not more money, they will achieve the true innovations like Bell Labs did.