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Based on voluminous corporate records and
extensive interviews with key employees, Science and
Corporate Strategy: Du Pont R&D, 1902-1980 provides
the first comprehensive, critical study of research and
development in a large U.S. corporation. Du Pont was among
a handful of US corporations that established formal research
and development laboratories at the turn of the century
to improve competitive positions in their respective industries.
Initially, Du Pont's executives viewed R&D as an important
though not central part of the corporation's strategy. However,
the gains made by the company's laboratories soon demonstrated
that R&D would be a critical ingredient in the firm's
success. The industrial research and development laboratory
became a major part of corporate structure; science became
a central part of corporate strategy.
In 1927, the Du Pont Company established
a small, elite, fundamental research program in its central
research unit, which led to the discovery of neoprene in
1930 and nylon in 1934. The tremendous success of nylon's
development and commercialization, coupled with an attack
by the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department against
the growing horizontal nature of the firm, sparked the dramatic
expansion of Du Pont's fundamental and pioneering research
program in the late 1940s.
Du Pont hoped to grow not through acquisition
but by discovering "new nylons." This strategy
failed, however. In the early 1960s, believing that the
D of R&D had been neglected, Du Pont launched
a massive development campaign to generate new products
out of earlier discoveries. After a decade, this New Venture
Era had fallen far short of its goals, had depleted Du Pont's
once-large cash reserves, and had led executives to question
the company's approach to research and development. By the
end of the 1970s the firm had returned to more centrally
controlled research management and had reallocated resources
into new areas, especially the life sciences.
Science and Corporate Strategy shows
Du Pont's executives grappling with important perennial
questions: Should research be linked to manufacturing facilities
or performed in separate, isolated laboratories? Should
research management be decentralized or centralized? Should
research focus on short- or long-term objectives? By examining
Du Pont's approaches to these questions, the book illuminates
difficulties inherent in R&D management.
Science and Corporate Strategy focuses
on Du Pont's most effective research managers and on the
problems of research management; it describes the development
of famous Du Pont products such as neoprene, nylon, Dacron,
Orlon, Lycra, Corfam, and Kevlar; most important, it leads
to a new understanding of the central role research and
development have played in the history of one of the major
corporations in the United States.
David A. Hounshell is Professor of History
at the University of Delaware. During 1987-1988 he is a
Marvin Bower Fellow at the Harvard Business School. His
From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932
(1984) received the 1987 Dexter Prize from the Society for
the History of Technology.
John Kenly Smith, Jr., is Assistant Professor
of History at Lehigh University. He was a Newcomen Fellow
in Business History at Harvard Business School in 1986-1987.
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