Management of Research and Development Organizations: Managing the Unmanageable

As the Training Manager for a DOE contracted physics lab, I am concerned with increasing the management skills of our scientists, engineers, and technicians. This book was indispensable in providing the rationale for valuing management skills in an environment like ours, and also provided excellent advice on how to use them with our unique workforce. It is practical, user-friendly, and well-written. It can easily be adapted as a support text for management development since it has study questions and a review at the end of every chapter. We have 30 copies of the book on site, both in our Library and in the hands of individual managers. I highly recommend it.

R & D is not only important to organizations whose names do not include the words research or development or technology; it is important to managers whose job titles do not include the terms researcher, scientist or engineer. The transformation of our industrial society into an informational society requires research; and a thorough understanding of the R & D function has become a critical issue for every manager. Unfortunately, the R & D function is difficult to manage. This is partly due to the nature of the work, and partly due to the nature of the people. One of the major lifelong dreams of a scientist or engineer is to develop a leap-ahead technology that will cause previous scientific dogma to become obsolete. This revolution causes the management systems and organizational infrastructure that supports the old technology to also become outmoded. Though there are many books citing the importance and unique aspects of R & D, there is a paucity of books on how to manage it. Most R & D management books are not broad enough in scope...they are project management books that detail PERT and budgetary control mechanisms. They are oft-times written in technical jargon making them inaccessible to the lay reader. This book is unique in that it takes management concepts and innovatively applies them to an R & D environment in an easy-to-understand and easy-to replicate way. It bravely examines topics that are typically taboo in R & D organizations. The ethos of a scientific community espouses universalism and the sharing of scientific knowledge. To acknowledge, much less prescribe, remedial steps for all the various ways that conflict can manifest itself (conflict within individuals, between individuals, between groups, and inter-culturally) is very revealing...and healing. Beyond being very informative, there are aspects to the book that are entertaining. There's a structure questionnaire on "Identifying Your Leadership Style." In one of the sections, you must rate your level of agreement with statements like: "The people I supervise have trouble getting along with each other." There's also questions at the end of each chapter which can be used to stimulate further thinking and discussion; and case studies for group review and analysis. This book is unique in that it is entertaining to read; and can also be used as a textbook. It brings to mind Samuelson' book (Economics, McGraw-Hill, 1976), not only because of its format but because it is a landmark book that breaks from the tradition of boring, technically-jargonned books that are inaccessible or unappealing to the reading public...This book operationalizes the "High Touch" that John Naisbitt said "High Tech" (Megatrends, Warner Books, 1982) necessitates.I have recommended this book to my colleagues at Motorola, and I recommend it to you as well.