institutions, we propose briefly to trace their development along a wavering line running from the Institution of Prince Henry the Navigator in the fifteenth century through the founding of the British Royal Society in the mid-seventeenth century to the establishment of the great industrial laboratories of Germany and the United States early in this century. Chapter III will treat the period from the Second World War to the present, with emphasis on those features of government-sponsored technology development mentioned earlier: long lead times amid conditions of uncertainty; difficulty in specifying end products; the necessity of procuring services from outside the sponsoring organization; the creation of contractual instruments to handle very large programs; and the development of special management techniques for coordinating a network of suppliers. The reader will note that many of these features demand quite as much in entrepreneurial talent as in the skill needed to exploit advances in scientific knowledge. For the remainder of the book, we will focus on the administration of the large technology development laboratories sponsored by NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Atomic Energy Commission and its successor agencies. In Chapters IV and V, we shall consider the identifying features of modern research institutions—those features that, whatever the difference in missions, are common to a contractor-operated facility like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, an agency facility like the Ames Research Center, and a nuclear weapons development center like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. From the structure of institutions, Chapter VI turns to the management of projects, that combination of centralized planning and control with decentralized execution so characteristic of modern research institutions. Chapter VII focuses on the management of professional personnel, with emphasis on problems of career development and transition. Chapters VIII and IX will cover supporting functions and the techniques by which institution directors manage manpower and funds. In Chapter X, we shall consider the relation between technology development institutions and their sponsors, with special emphasis on congressional authorization and appropriations cycles. The final chapter will gather all these threads together by reviewing three major problems - or one problem with three aspects within the organization: how to adjust to changing roles and missions, how to find or keep sponsors, and how to define the role of basic research in an engineering environment. In sum, the question to be answered (and the one being considered all along) is how innovation within the organization can best be fostered and maintained. CHAPTER II The Technology Development Laboratory From its Origins to the Second World War The present technology development laboratory is a relatively young institution with roots deep in the past. While we could jump immediately into the problems of the contemporary research institution, to do so would omit some of the most interesting parts of the story. Few institutions wholly outgrow their origins, and today's mission-oriented laboratories are lineal descendants of the institutions established by the Royal Society of Great Britain, the German chemical laboratories of the early twentieth century, and the research bureaus sponsored by the Government of the United States. Neither systems engineering nor contract research nor the captive research facility with essentially one client emerged full-blown, as the result of some inexorable process. Nor are the technology development laboratories, on one hand, and the institutes devoted to theoretical research, on the other, absolutely distinct. Such things as the justification of research for utilitarian ends, the focusing of scientific activity in a group, and the need to justify continuously the organization's goals, are common to both. Because the origins of both kinds of institution are bound up with each other and because we believe that an inquiry into their common sources can provide a deeper understanding of today's Federally-sponsored research, we chose to begin there. Origins of the Technology Development Laboratory If an institution is to be judged by the extent and duration of its influence, the Lyceum of Aristotle was the most successful, as it was the earliest, of all research institutions (ref. 13). Founded by Aristotle during his last long residence in Athens (335-323 B.C.), the Lyceum was a combination of university, research center, and scientific academy. Like most research centers today, the Lyceum had a government sponsor, Alexander the Great, who had been Aristotle's pupil. The mission, as we would say, of the Lyceum embraced a vast research program; unlike Plato's Academy, whose work was purely theoretical, the Lyceum had a strongly practical bent, with important accomplishments in biology, psychology, and anatomy. The work of the Lyceum included assembling a collection of maps and manuscripts, and the delivery of public lectures. In fact, almost all of Aristotle's surviving works consist of his lecture notes. The Lyceum long survived Aristotle, and its influence extended through the Middle Ages down to the seventeenth century, by which time Aristotelianism had become a byword for a dry, hairsplitting philosophy totally out of tune with the new system of the natural sciences. But in its origins, the Lyceum was precisely the opposite. Although the results of Aristotle's research proved immensely significant, his method of organized scientific research lapsed after his death and had to be rediscovered some eighteen centuries later. The first tentative revival of goal-oriented research probably occurred in the early fifteenth century, when the growth of commerce made improvements in navigation (especially the determination of longitude), improved ship design, and improved artillery imperative. Perhaps the earliest institution with the earmarks of a modern technology development laboratory was the organization set up by Prince Henry of Portugal, or Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) (fig. 1), near Sagres at Cape St. Vincent in southwestern Portugal. Opinions differ about the nature of Henry's "laboratory." One historian (J.H. Parry) states flatly that "the story of a school of astronomy and mathematics at Sagres is pure invention," while another (Marie Boas) says that he set up "a veritable research institute" at Sagres (ref. 14). From the little that we do know, certain conclusions follow: • Henry's institution was multidisciplinary. We would not go so far as Parry, since it appears that mathematics, astronomy, cartography, navigation, and certain things connected with the preservation of food and water were represented. In conducting the affairs of his "laboratory," Henry recognized the importance of establishing relations with the creators of new knowledge. Thus he founded the chair of mathematics at the University of Lisbon. The "laboratory" was mission oriented, since its purpose was to master the art and science of navigation. According to Parry, "Prince Henry placed gentlemen of his own household in command of the ships, and set them definite geographical objects to be reached and passed. Thus from the habit of making fishing and casual trading voyages along a relatively short stretch of coast, there developed a programme of progressive, though intermittent, exploration much further south." (ref. 15.) There was, then, a stress on applications and practical results and what is less certain an interest in scholarship and research, so far as these made the former possible. Henry wanted to open profitable new trade routes, to convert pagans, and to make contact with any |