Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
In the wake of the 1956 agreement, AT&T appeared to be indestructible. It now had the U.S. government’s blessing. It was easily the largest company in the world by assets and by workforce. And its Bell Laboratories, as Fortune magazine had declared, was indisputably “the world’s greatest industrial laboratory.” And yet even in the 1960s and 197
... See moreJon Gertner • The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
In engineering work in the drafting room, it was plain to the men to whom he gave his work that he could not make a sketch or read a blueprint. It was to his everlasting credit that, with his limited formal education, his mind worked like a modern electronic calculating machine and he had the answer to what he wanted. The trick was to fathom the de
... See moreCharles E. Sorensen • My Forty Years With Ford (Great Lakes Books Series)
Headed by thirty-three-year-old Johnson, that original Lockheed Skonk Works set out to design the first U.S. jet fighter in 180 days. Working furiously against its deadline, the group managed to produce a prototype of the P-80 Shooting Star with 37 days to spare. World War II ended before the plane could be produced in large numbers, but the P-80 w
... See morePatricia Ward Biederman • Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration
As for Kelleher’s own office, the architect had received specific instructions: no windows. Once word had spread that he had a windowless office, Kelleher explained, how could anyone dare jockey for an office with a better view? To further control new-office politics, his executive assistant, Colleen Barrett, now a corporate officer, banned departm
... See more