private companies could also use too. Antony Funnell : That taken into account, are there lessons, are there things that modern inventors, companies involved in technology, could learn from Bell Labs and its approach? Jon Gertner : I think there are. I think on a big macroscopic level, the view from 30,000 feet, is the lesson...the countries that invest in basic scientific research, that it can pay off in ways you can hardly imagine, but not just in new companies but new industries and millions of jobs. And really these investments at Bell Labs that paid off -- the transistor and the laser, cellular telephone networks, those kinds of things that really have become the infrastructure for a lot of our economy -- were really coming out of scientific investment that didn't pay off quickly. On a more personal level, I think that giving sometimes researchers a kind of freedom to follow their own curiosity can also pay off in very important ways as well. And also by pairing them in some ways with real-world problems is probably the third thing. So if I was going to say that in addition to giving them freedom, sort of knowing...and I think at Bell Labs they knew that if they came up with something out of their research it could be practically implemented in the phone system. And that was a very effective spark, that even if they were looking for new knowledge, they knew that discovery and ultimately an innovation would