APPLIED SCIENCE AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH 221 



that must be abandoned. This project system may be re- 

 o^arded as one extreme in the control of the research work. 



The other extreme, almost universal in the early days of 

 industrial research, is the direction of the research by an indi- 

 vidual responsible only to the top management of the com- 

 pany and ^vithout supervision in his own work. To him, the 

 company entrusts the funds that it proposes to spend, and 

 from him the company asks only results, with such account- 

 ing controls as insure merely that the funds have been ex- 

 pended for research in accordance with ordinary business 

 principles. This method regards the whole of the research 

 expenditure frankly as a gamble in which the management, 

 having hired an expert in the field, leaves it to him and to 

 his men to spend their funds in the hope that the company 

 will get an adequate return. The project system regards 

 research as a business which can be organized, and, ^vhile 

 recognizing that some of the projects will fail, proposes that 

 the successful ones should carry the failures. Viewed in this 

 way, the project system will be far more attractive to business 

 management than the opposite system, in which control over 

 the choice of research projects is exercised only by the research 

 men. 



In assessing the relative advantages of the project system 

 and of the individual direction of industrial research, we 

 must consider their relative efficiency and their cost. The 

 overhead cost of a laboratory operated on the project system 

 is necessarily greater than that of a laboratory operated with- 

 out it, so that it should be demonstrably more efficient if it is 

 to be worth while. 



The development of new products for the market, like 

 production itself, can be organized and planned; so can the 

 service work. But when we turn to the scientific '^vork of the 

 laboratory, to the researches from which new discoveries may 

 come, any systematized planning becomes difficult and per- 

 haps impossible. This can be met by the direct allocation of 

 certain funds for this fundamental ^vork. It enables the scien- 

 tific men to carry out work that no committee ^vould approve 



