[jackcosgrove]

Agreed on the public-private nature of Bell Labs.

I would also ask how we could recreate another exemplar in that space, DARPA. Now of course DARPA is alive and kicking, but what about another DARPA, say in Europe?

The two organizations did have different missions, with DARPA being mostly an investor while Bell Labs was mostly a practitioner.

The question that springs to mind is, why did Bell Labs decay while DARPA did not?