The Corporate Lab as Ringmaster by Steve Lohr
THE Internet has changed many things, of course, but one of its more far-reaching effects has been to transform the economics of innovation.
The nation’s big corporate research and development laboratories — at I.B.M., General Electric, Hewlett-Packard and a handful of other companies — have their roots and rationale in the industrial era, when communication was costly, information traveled slowly and social networks were fostered at conferences and lunchrooms instead of over the Web.
