• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

- 2 - No. 77 - 5/4/45 Is research essential for social progress? Is it fundamental or superficial research that is essential? What is the essential need of fundamental research? "Permit me a few comments on the first question: Is research essential for social progress? The question tempts me to a blunt remark: Is running essen­ tial when you are in a stampede? In other words, with research as a tool avail­ able to your competitors can you ignore its power? If you doubt the power of research look about you: Who here is dressed in homespun? Who here breakfasted exclusively on unprocessed foods raised and transported without benefit of meteorology, chemistry, physics and biology? Who got here on his own feet with­ out the aid of airplane, train, subway, taxicab, or elevator? Can you. or any one else, stop by fiat or pious resolve the advances of technology? Not without getting left so far behind as to make the words 'social progress' a cackling mockery. I suspect that there have been societies and states in the history of the world in which life and human relationships were to the healthy participants as agreeable or more agreeable than life in these modern times is to us. But I am quite sure you wouldn't trade your life for theirs: you like to get well from a ruptured appendix, diphtheria, or an acute mania or a rodent ulcer of the face--they couldn't and they didn't. In fact, it is precisely in the field of medical science that I would insist that progress is real. Do you seriously expect progress in the field of drug therapy to come from ignoring the kind of study which has given us our present amazing results in the use of insulin, liver extracts, vitamins, the sulfa compounds and penicillin? "'Social progress?' Let me tell you a story. One night in Berlin about 1929 I met Fritz Haber, whose fundamental researches on fixing nitrogen had en­ abled the Germans to fight the last war with synthetic explosives, independent of saltpeter from Chile. Despite this service to his Fatherland Haber was later rewarded by the Nazis with persecution and a broken heart. That evening he asked me if I found the research institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft at Berlin-Dahlem an ornament to German culture. I said 1 Yes 1 • He replied: 'Excuse me, it is not quite so! Ornament, no! Necessity, yes! We have enough solar energy in Germany to raise food enough to feed 38,000,000, From technological superiority alone can we export manufactures enough to buy the food for the other 20,000,000, From research only comes technological superiority. From brains depend twenty million people, It is not an ornament--it is a necessity. 11 • * * * • * • MANAGEMENT'S EYE-VIEW OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH Maurice Holland, Industrial Research Adviser, contributed an article of this title to Chemical and Engineering news for April, 1945. We quote pertinent parts: "Management is the directing head of corporation activities. Research is its heart. Research is the central pumping station which circulates the life­ blood of new ideas through the entire corporate system. The vital fluid of red corpuscles brings new life to production, distribution, sales, and advertising, Finally, the balance sheet of health and growth is reflected in figures and charts-1fever charts' and high blood pressure in the management office if the figures are red; an extra dividend for stockholders and a bonus for key people in the organization if the figures are black. "To continue the medical analogy, the research department as the heart or pumping station for vital fluid circulating through the system might be consid­ ered to be the purifying agency to rid the body of tradition, prejudices, - 3 - No, 77 - 5/4/45 ignorance, and obsolescence. The red corpuscles of new ideas, new applications, I may be considered a tonic that can serve to tone up the whole corporate body. 11 ! said 'can serve', for too frequently its real function in relation to the growth factor is either overlooked or neglected by management. The definite and thorough understanding of the research function by the management in its proper relationship to the corporate health and growth is the first step in getting 'religion of science1 in the service of industry. The attitude of man­ agement towards research, like faith in religion, is the first step in the right direction. 11 What is management's attitude toward research as we look out over the broad representative cross section of American industry? While it varies from industry to industry it is almost axiomatic that in the older industries the growth factor of research is sterile or at least inhibited. Take, for example, textiles, iron and steel, fisheries products, railroads, and milling, and com­ pare their type of executives and the lack of technical or scientific background to the managements of newer industries which literally sprang from a test tube, such as the chemical, petroleum, electrical, aviation, electronic, and the rayon and nylon fibers of a rejuvenated textile industry. 11 We employed a group of graduate students of the :Business School of New York University, under the direction of Lewis Haney, to make a comprehensive and detailed study of the growth factors of research in American industry. They were in about this order of importance: 1, Scientific, engineering, or technically trained executives on the management level--by far the most important single factor. 2, The technological background, processes, and tradition of the indus­ try itself. 3. The technological position of the industry in America as compared with its foreign competitors. {This refers to the period of the early 19301 s when Germany particularly was assumed to have scientific leadership in industry throughout the world.) 4. The amount of money spent on organized research in relation to net worth, gross sales, and advertising expenditures. 11 Let1 s look at some factual evidence of management reporting each year to its bankers, the stockholders. If 700 annual reports of industrial manufactur­ ing companies, whose securities are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, are any indication, then more than 300 of these annual reports made some reference to the research activities of the company last year. Many more are doing so every year, A recent study by one of the outstanding opinion research organiza­ tions clearly indicates that the average stockholder (of whom it is estimated there are 25 million) places research foutth in a list of 15 subjects covering corporation activities which they prefer to see reported on by companies in which they have a financial interest. 11 This growing interest of stockholders in technical research activities as one form of guarantee for their long-term investment may have a profound effect on management's attitude toward research in the near future. This will be an increasingly important factor as we move into tho postwar era when American industry will have to go to the investing public for enterprise and reconver­ sion funds. - 4 - No. 77 - 5/4/45 "The interest of management toward scientific research as a very important part of a broad public relations program is constantly increasing! For instance: At the recent 25th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Standard Oil Co.'s development laboratories, in an all-day research forum in New York, at­ tended by 500 industrial, research, and other executives representing industry, universities, and government bureaus, a major part of the program was devoted to I research in the small company' . "Perhaps at this point someone should raise a word of caution, that the public1 s impression of what constitutes real research may be mistaken for 14-color advertisements of scientists working with weird apparatus', which a.re too frequently appearing in some of our national magazines. That type of re­ search activity motivated by a desire for scientific prestige--or public accept­ ance as a guarantee of quality--has been classified by no less an authority than 'Boss' Kettering as 'advertising research'. Prestige in research activities does not come from 4-color page ads, particularly in national magazines, but rather from the truly scientific prestige of the laboratory staff and their publications-in scientific and technical journals! And there is still one other ingredient to be added to the research formula for management--that is, patience! "During our service with National Research Council and particularly after a number of trips through the research laboratories of Germany and other indus­ trial nations of Europe, we made a plea to American industry by article, address and radio, for what I called 'patient money'. German industrialists put 15 million gold marks of this kind of money and nearly 20 years of patient plodding I to developing aniline dyes and capturing the dye markets of the world! (Remem­ ber this was the early 19201 s and there were only a handful of laboratories in .American industry). This kind of patient money produced Buna S rubber, Zelle­ wool, and Compreg wood products, which we saw in the research laboratories in Germany on a Research Council tour organized especially for American industrial executives and bankers as late as 193?. As one of the executives on that tour remarked: 'Most of our research observers were so impressed with the "rabbits of technologyu which German scientists were pulling out of the hat in that yea:r of 193? that a majority of them failed to get the sig­ nificant point: At least 10 or 15 years before that same management had put up "educated money"; and more important, the patience to wait for these dramatic results.' •....... ...... "One of the top executives of the company made a statement, which I think you will find revealing as to the attitude of management towards research: 111 In most cases we give these research fellows all the money they can use.

Load more

  13

Copy Link