When mathematician Rajiv Laroia joined Bell Labs in the summer of 1992, he thought he had found his ideal niche-if not for life, then at least for a comfortably long time. Armed with his new doctorate and a passion to make his mark, he reported to the Mathematical Sciences Research Department, where he found a sweet opportunity to work with world-class mathematicians, engineers and statisticians. "There was no specific charter," Laroia relates. "We were given sort of free rein to do anything we wanted to do." Bent on first broadening his horizons, he dived into the basics of communications-wireless, optics, theory and more. Laroia envisioned writing papers and contributing to state-of-the-art systems. But he didn't foresee leaving AT&T's (now Lucent's) illustrious research division-especially not to start a company. He wasn't an entrepreneur.

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