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The U.S. economy is the envy of the world, and the key to its
success is technological innovation. In this fascinating and in-depth account
reported from three continents, Robert Buderi turns the spotlight on corporate
research and the management of innovation that is helping drive the economy's
robust growth. Here are first hand communiqués from inside the labs of
a reborn IBM, resurgent GE and Lucent, research upstarts Intel and Microsoft,
and other leading American firms -- as well as top European and Japanese competitors.
It was only a few years ago that competitiveness experts --
U.S. well-wishers and naysayers alike -- concluded that America had lost its business
and technological edge. The nation's companies, they asserted, couldn't match
the development and manufacturing efficiency of overseas rivals. Yet now the nation
is humming along, riding an unparalleled wave of innovation. Buderi
tells us this turnaround has come on many fronts -- in marketing, sales, manufacturing,
and the creation of start-up companies. But Engines of Tomorrow deals with
a central element that has gone largely unexamined: corporate research. It's the
research process that provides the technologies that spur growth. Research is
behind the renaissance of IBM, the stunning growth of Lucent, and much of the
steamrolling American recovery. Focusing in the fast-moving
communications-computer-electronics sector, Buderi profiles some of the world's
leading thinkers on innovation, talks with top inventors, and describes the exciting
technologies coming down the pike -- from information appliances to electronic
security and quantum computing. In the process, he examines the vital strategic
issues in which central labs play a determining role, including: - How
IBM's eight labs around the world figure in Lou Gerstner's plans to achieve consistent
double-digit growth -- and to join GE as a $100 billion concern.
- Why
Xerox's famed Palo Alto Research Center is vying to resuscitate it's company's
lagging fortunes by sending anthropologists into the field to study the hidden
ways people really work.
- What Hewlett-Packard will
do without its original instrument business, recently spun off as Agilent Technologies.
The business was central to HP Labs MC2 philosophy of merging
research expertise in measurement, computation, and communication -- and its departure
removed a lot that was unique about HP.
- How the
November 1999 federal court finding that Microsoft operates a monopoly hinders
the Seattle giant's acquisition plans and makes it increasingly vital for nine-year
old Microsoft Research to lead the way in innovating from within. Could this be
the next great lab for the twenty-first century?
With
authority and undaunted optimism about the underlying vitality of the research
process, Buderi discusses these issues and reveals more about the future of some
of the world's best and most powerful companies. Robert
Buderi, a former BusinessWeek technology editor and Vannevar Bush Fellow
at M.I.T., is now an Upside magazine columnist and contributing editor
to Technology Review. He is the author of The Invention That Changed
The World and his articles have appeared in Newsweek, Time, The
Economist, Science, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly.
He served as an advisor to the British Broadcasting Corporation's recently released
Science at War documentary series. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
