1. Comprehension

Peter Drucker on Entrepreneurs

Which way of completing each of the following sentences agrees with the original text? Some sentences may be completed in more than one

way.

1. An entrepreneurial boom

1. will possibly emerge in this century.

2. has not been seen in this century.

3. is the extraordinary economic event of this century.

2. An enormous number of new jobs

1. have been created by large established companies.

2. have been taken by the millions of women who have entered the labor force.

3. have been taken up by the quickly growing population after the Second World War.

3. The large majority of high-tech entrepreneurs fail because

1. they only talk about profit but do not work hard enough.

2. they do not have enough cash to start a business.

3. they know too little about financial planning.

4. The two men who started a barbershop chain were successful because

1. they were real experts in haircutring.

2. they applied all the elementary management techniques.

3. they only accepted cash from their customers.

5. The new entrepreneurs rely heavily on

1. glamor.

2. predictable technology.

3. demographical data.

6. Most new entrepreneurs worked for big companies until they realized that

1. there was no chance of being promoted in the near future.

2. they had a good idea which they thought they could sell themselves.

3. they could build a thousand million dollar company themselves.

7. Compared with giant companies small businesses

1. are more flexible.

2. do not lay so much stress on the organization of management.

3. enjoy a higher degree of anonymity.

8. Peter Drucker believes that big companies

1. will die out soon.

2. are not as efficient as they used to be.

3. like other big institutions, are often regarded as failures.

2. Anticipation

Inside Bell Labs

Before you read the text, look at the layout.

1. What can you anticipate about the article by just looking at the title photo and the subtitle?

2. The italicized introduction or lead is meant to provide as much information as necessary to arouse the reader's curiosity about the text. What aspects are mentioned in this introduction? Which ones would you be interested in following up?

3. Who is the author and what are his credentials?

3. Organization of the Text

Now have a closer look at the organization of the text as a whole and the function of each paragraph.

1. First read through the text and underline the key words or phrases of each paragraph.

2. Then number the eighteen paragraphs of the article and match them with the descriptions below using the following sentence:

The function of paragraph. . . (number) is to point out

1. the growing expansion and diversity of Bell Labs in spite of the court-enforced break-up of AT&T.

2. the enormous attention basic research gets through epochal discoveries.

3. the new emphasis on robotics and computer science.

78 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP

4. that competition has always been a constant driving force in research.

5. impressive technological products which support the view that Bell Labs have an advantage over their competitors.

6. the use of the Karmarkar algorithm.

7. a Bell Lab invention that revolutionized astronomy.

h) the latest invention of the physics

research division, i) a discovery for which Penzias and his

colleague Wilson won the Nobel Prize in

1978.

j) the development of an optical computer, k) an example of the practical use of basic

research on ants. 1) the motives of scientists for joining Bell

Labs, m) the idea of market-oriented research and

development, n) Bell Labs as the most important corporate

research facility in the United States, o) the percentage of staff doing basic

research, p) the size and diversity of the Bell research

staff.

q) an ingenious idea of Arno Penzias. r) the importance of the transfer of basic

scientific discovery to the world of

commerce.