Japanese telco giant plants research lab flag in Silicon Valley
Some of the computing industry’s biggest innovations have come from research labs. The transistor was created at AT&T’s Bell Labs, the hard drive by IBM Research and the graphical user interface at Xerox’s PARC. NTT, one of Japan’s telecommunications giants, wants similar success. It’s already got thousands of researchers in Japan working on projects with near-term potential, but now it’s picked Silicon Valley for its first US lab for more basic academic research that could pay off with breakthroughs farther in the future.