By Peter Bernstein, Senior Editor

This is the third in my four-part series of posts about Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs. As noted previously, focus of this series is not just to introduce you to the world’s most famous research organization, but to provide details and insights on its past, present and future. The first two posts provided an overall view of the Labs, and details on how its philosophy of “Innovating Innovation” is enhancing its preeminent position in the scientific world and allowing it to keep Alcatel-Lucent in market leadership positions. As can be seen in the title, this post details the rich history of the contributions made by Bells Labs in empowering businesses and enriching the lives of people around the world through the development and application of the ingenuity and knowledge of its researchers.

For those of us in the content creation business, there is nothing better than a Top 10 list.

By Peter Bernstein, Senior Editor

Let’s start with the basics.

The term innovation comes from the Latin innovatus, the noun form of innovare "to renew or change." It refers to the creation of better and/or more effective products, processes, technologies or ideas that impact markets, governments and society as a whole. Today it also connotes an unleashing of ingenuity that results in substantive not incremental positive change — a single word that packs a powerful punch.

In a business context, innovation also represents both current value (in the form of libraries of intellectual property), and the ability to generate incalculable future value.