It's worth noting that for most of the twentieth century AT&T was a driving force for scientific and engineering innovation in the US, greater than most universities (though perhaps not MIT). Researchers there won seven Nobel prizes, and two Turing awards. On a more mundane note, Unix was invented there, as well as C and C++, and the photovoltaic cell.
No disrespect to AT&T's Bell Labs and its employees legendary achievements was meant or implied. I'm well aware of what they stood for. (my first unix wm was mgr...).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Discoveries_and_devel...
None of these accomplishments would have been possible if AT&T didn't know how to coddle geniuses.