Research and Dr. Chu Essay

Submitted By krwheeler1
Words: 651
Pages: 3

A main problem that occurs within a business is that research for expanding development is subpar at best. Many strides have been taken by different firms in the fields of telecommunication, electric fields, biological research, and many more in order to increase efficiency of potentially revolutionary ideas. The lack of innovation can be combatted by a proper environment, which is the strongest lead into making an innovative research lab. Previously working in the world renowned Bell Labs, Dr. Chu brings an insight on effectively making an innovative environment through past experiences and examples of former noble prize winners and great innovators. During his seminar, Dr. Chu gave a brief synopsis of what he believes is important in creating a great working environment. His first point was to treat research as an expense and not as a profit margin. He explains that this establishes an invisible pressure on researchers to not only bring forth innovative technology, but also that the technology has to work off a very inexpensive budget and a very small timeline, making it very hard for scientists to be truly inspired and passionate but their study. He has found that the best method is to take a percentage of the profits and give it back to the researchers as inspiration for additional and improved studies in the future. Secondly, he stated that management should not come from a businessperson but instead a top researcher in the lab. Along with this, Dr. Chu recommended through the words of Clinton Davisson, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, that a manager should not dictate how the research should run but inspire intellectual growth in their researchers. With a manager supporting their researchers, Dr. Chu stated that manager who looks for alternatives can lead to more innovative and efficient designs. He illustrated this by the Shockley team which designed the transistor for Bell Labs. He further went into the aspect of “share the work to share the glory”, explaining that Shockley was upset over the fact that he was not included in the Nobel Prize for the transistor. He explained that researchers should understand that in order to share in the glory of a project, they must first share the work of the project, of which supervision should not be considered work. Along with his examples, Dr. Chu gave three lessons that should be able to help with any Lab and lead to a more innovative environment. The first lesson was that when you hire a researcher, hire someone better