Comment by luriel

A very good book could be written on the topic, is one of the most sad tragedies of the 20th century.

All my information is second hand, and is a very complex topic, but basically when AT&T spun off Lucent, and they tried to more directly monetize the innovations they were making, the whole thing started to break down, management sucked, researchers started to bail out, and it became a vicious circle.