Grant Lenahan Appledore Research Group had the opportunity to attend the NOKIA Bell Labs seminar honoring the 100th anniversary of Claude Shannon’s birth. Shannon’s work on information theory has been seminal in our industry, building the foundation for digital transmission, wireless transmission, and has been applied to myriad other problems. He is truly a giant among giants. Routing list: Shannon, Bode, Nyquist and Black WOW! While the event was intended to honor Shannon, it clearly also signaled the importance that the “new” NOKIA places on Bell Labs, its heritage, and the role of innovation in the industry. It included lectures by some of the brightest minds in technology over the past decades – including Irwin Jacobs or Qualcomm, Bob Metcalf of 3COM (the “Com family of companies” joked Metcalf), Eric Schmidt of Google and Henry Markram of the Brain Project (Switzerland), plus many more panelists and demonstrations. ARG took away several clear messages that bear repeating. Metcalf, Jacobs and Schmidt all emphasized the need to tightly couple science, engineering and commercialization – whether traditional product design and manufacturing, or a more “cloud age” version as in Alphabet. Unsaid, of course, is how much of the work done concurrent to Metcalf’s […]