Comment by un_ess

The book "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory describes how the Labs was working. The last chapter tries to figure out why it was working and one of the conclusion is that the Labs was always guided by the long term idea that it might help the telephone company (and that the breakup removed a) the long-term funding b) some kind of direction )