Managing the Flow of Technology: Technology Transfer and the Dissemination of Technological Information Within the R&d Organization

I've read this book cover to cover at least 3 times and consider it to be one of the 2 or 3 most influential books in my personal experience. Thomas Allen's groundbreaking work on the genesis of ideas, the patterns of effective communication and collaboration, and the influence of spatial orientation on success and productivity of research environments is just extraordinary. Every manager of a multidisciplinary reseach organization, particularly in the private sector, should devour this book.

Mr. Allen gives us a condensed collection of empirical facts about how engineers talk to each other. This is an amazing book and gave me new insights while I was working on a thesis. I give the book 4 stars not because of its scientific contents but because of its writing style. Even though this is a book targeted at researchers, it could have been written in a more entertaining form!