Bell Labs

Have you even ever heard of Bell Labs?  The smartest engineers imaginable, inventing the transistor, Unix and a zillion patents


The Company (Ma Bell) worshiped them


In reality, they were like that story of placing monkeys at typewriters and eventually a novel would result:  these were the geekiest of geeks - heck, Arno Penzias was their president for awhile (his apparent qualifications being he won the Nobel Prize for discovering Saturn (or some such)


Enter a new team: us.  The curmudgeon's sainted wife, MBA in BUSINESS MANAGEMENT in hand, who's team developed the Verizon microcell for cellphones that makes AT&Ts service laughable because they didn't buy into the right technology (CDMA, for you curious sorts)


As times started to get tough at Lucent, our dear leaders immediately leapt to the idea - "hey, these Bell Labs guys are smart, right?  Let's let THEM run the business"


Not MBAs in BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, but the geekiest of the geeks


Thank goodness for my pension...