Alan Turing, Computers and Strategic Management
Alan Turing Alan Turing developed many of the basic concepts for digital computers in the 1930s. In 1943, he came to the United States to exchange ideas and experiences with scientists and engineers at Bell Labs. He spent a great deal of time talking with Claude Shannon, the father of modern information theory, about their mutual interest in digital computers. One day while having lunch in an AT&T executive dining room, Turing was describing his ideas about what a “thinking machine” could do. "His high-pitched voice already stood out above the general murmur of the well-behaved junior executives grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard to say: 'No, I’m not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I’m after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.'" (Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: An Enigma , p. 251.) Given the abysmal record of...