“Science has the power to cause the organization to set off in new directions,” writes David Allison, “even to cause the organization to alter its structure.” And through the organization, corporate science is changing the pattern of our lives. Its power has become so manifest that “R&D” is now understood by a large public to mean the “research and development” component of a corporation. And yet the actual workings of R&D have themselves been little research up to now. This book confronts many questions about R&D, and if it provides even more answers, that is all to the good at this point – a real start has finally been made.
The questions and answers are provided by a number of qualified observers, ranging from psychiatrists and social psychologists to R&D managers and marketers. Their contributions are collected in three sections, one on the nature of the technical men who staff the corporate laboratories, another on the nature of the corporate organizations themselves, and between them – forming the middle section of the book – an investigation of the environment effected by the interaction of the two. Editor Allison sets the stage for each section with an introductory essay.
