everybody wants the training. Great scientists are creative and every scientist wants to be great. Then perhaps the research director be comes concerned about the aging of his staff. H e and they have seen Lehmann's curves on declining crea tivity with advancing age, and also the more recent studies, which try to take some of the pain out of those curves. T h e day will come when the whole staff is over the h u m p . T h e emphasis on creativity need not be explicit; it may be implicit in the organizational structure. Let us look at a basic research unit of a research and development labora tory reporting to the manufacturing department of the firm. T h e top management tolerates the basic re search unit but sees nothing coming out of it. Anything new and worth while by way of creative ideas is coming out of the development work. T h e people in development get recognition for their contributions and move u p the ladder into highly paid management jobs. T h e people in basic research are regarded as "long-hairs," unsuited to manage ment, a condition which leads to low morale in basic research. Creativity involves replacing old structures with new. I n our ef forts to control the process so that it will go on in an orderly, profitable, and relatively painless manner we have sometimes made the error of putting pressure on scientists to in novate, while at the same time build ing pressures against innovation. And sometimes the error is made of giving creativity courses, good in themselves, in a n organizational environment that is not conducive to creativity. Perhaps we need to look more closely at the organizational structure which builds contradic tory pressures within itself. W e cannot assume that structures, which are stable when continuous, repetitive, and economical produc tion is required, will also be stable when continuous adaptation to change is required. T h e latter is becoming the rule for modern in dustry and we need new organization principles to take advantage of in novative opportunity. 34th Annual Meeting, American Institute of Chemists, Akron, Ohio, May 24, 1957.
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For further information, circle numlier 113 A on Readers' Service Card, paie 119 A VOL. 49, NO. 9
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SEPTEMBER 1957
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