A Brain Trust in Bangalore

Sarnoff and other big tech names are setting up research operations in India -- and not just because of the cheap labor

They call it the monkey incident. A couple of months ago, a handful of engineers at Sarnoff Corp.'s lab in Bangalore, India, were conference-calling with colleagues at the research-for-hire outfit's headquarters in Princeton, N.J. They were sitting around a table in a meeting room when they heard loud banging from behind an air conditioner cover on the wall. One of them lifted the cover, and a baby monkey leaped into the room and raced around underfoot.

Two of the engineers were so surprised that they jumped up on the table. Then, "We all fled the room and closed the door," says Kiran Nayak, one of the participants, who recalls the incident with a huge smile.

It all turned out well in the end. In due time, the monkey returned to its mother, out on the building's ledge, and the engineers reclaimed their conference room and resumed talking about data-compression algorithms.

Such are the oddities of global research collaboration.


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