Research in the Industrial Corporation: I

Abstract

Although inventions still continue to emerge in the more traditional ways- from the individual inventor and the university laboratory — new sources have appeared in recent years such as the research organisation of the industrial corporation, the industrial research association of a whole industry, the specialised institution (profit or non-profit seeking) and the government research laboratory. Of these newer centres that which has attracted most attention and aroused the greatest hopes of further technical advance is the industrial research organisation owned by the firm itself, and especially by the large firm. This is a modern development. Its beginnings are to be found at the end of the last century but the momentum of its growth has increased within the past decade and it is perhaps not too much to say that it constitutes the most spectacular change since 1900 in the activities of the industrial corporation. Very sweeping claims are now made both as to the benefits which have already accrued from industrial research and as to its future potentialities. It is not infrequently suggested that the operation of a research organisation is a condition of survival — ‘any firm which does not conduct research would quickly go bankrupt’.

Whatever is proposed to him (the man of genius) as the object of his application, can never fix him, unless it be that which nature has allotted him. He never lets himself be diverted from hence for any length of time, and is always sure to return to it, in spite of all opposition, nay sometimes in spite of himself. Of all impulses, that of nature, from whom he has received his inclinations, is much the strongest. — Abbé Dubos, Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture.¹