The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner. It's about Bell Labs and the people behind it.
The idea that a company would have some kind of special research division where people can pretty much do as they wish (just "improve the product") feels like something in a fantasy world. But it existed, and it gave us amazing inventions that fast forwarded technology and improved the lives of everyone, and barely anyone even knows about it! Lasers, the transistor, fiber optics, UNIX, the cell network, even friggin information theory.
Even the [eventual] HQ building was designed in a interesting way. They had purposely long hallways of offices, so whenever you had to go to lunch (or the bathroom) you would inevitably be 'caught' by coworkers, forcing interaction.
The idea that a company would have some kind of special research division where people can pretty much do as they wish (just "improve the product") feels like something in a fantasy world. But it existed, and it gave us amazing inventions that fast forwarded technology and improved the lives of everyone, and barely anyone even knows about it! Lasers, the transistor, fiber optics, UNIX, the cell network, even friggin information theory.
Even the [eventual] HQ building was designed in a interesting way. They had purposely long hallways of offices, so whenever you had to go to lunch (or the bathroom) you would inevitably be 'caught' by coworkers, forcing interaction.