R and d for Industry by Bettye H. Pruitt, Margaret B. W. Graham 1990, Hardcover: items on eBay.com

Publisher's Note
America's aluminum century began with a scientific revolution as important to the nation's industrial life as the American Revolution had been to its political life. Alcoa, during its century-long history, has surpassed many American manufacturing companies in devoting its energies to linked process and product innovation and has invested more heavily in R & D than its competition has. As a result, the company's history provides a valuable opportunity to observe the development of R & D within a corporation. R & D for Industry examines both the internal dynamic of that evolution and the impact of such external factors as the nation's changing R & D climate. Because Alcoa has focused on innovation as much as on product development, the company's history reveals the special nature of process R & D as well as the problems it poses for research management. Many claim that the United States has fallen behind chiefly in process technology; Alcoa's experience can help us to understand the conditions, internal and external, that have either fostered or inhibited process R & D. Alcoa's history encompasses American manufacturing preeminence during and after World War II as well as the steel industry's decline in the early 1980s. How Alcoa's management rejuvenated their business despite that decline will be of interest to anyone concerned about the current deterioration of manufacturing innovation. Margaret Graham, Associate Dean and Professor of Operations Management at Boston University's School of Management is also a founding director of The Winthrop Group, Inc., a company specializing in the history of business and technology. She is the author of The Business of Research: RCA and the Videodisc (CUP, 1986). Bettye H. Pruitt, a principal of the Winthrop Group, is the author of a prize-winning article on regional economic history and the author of Donnelley and the Yellow Pages: The Birth of an Advertising Medium (1986).

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