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Research Management Today

MAR 01, 1991
Research managers should aim to maintain an environment in which practitioners can be creative, and leave the choice of the object of research to the researchers themselves.
John J. Gilman

The general problem besetting research management was stated succinctly centuries ago: There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old condition, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

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References

  1. 1. V. Lytkin, Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya, 25 May 1989, p. 6, as reported in Daily SNAP [Soviet News Abstracts Publication, Wright‐Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio].

  2. 2. J. J. Baruch, Science 224, 7 (1984).https://doi.org/SCIEAS

  3. 3. J. Barzun, Science: The Glorious Entertainment, Harper and Row, New York (1964).

  4. 4. M. Josephson, Edison, McGraw‐Hill, New York (1959).

  5. 5. L. A. Hawkins, Adventure into the Unknown, William Morrow, New York (1950).

  6. 6. D. A. Hounshell, J. K. Smith Jr, Science and Corporate Strategy, Cambridge U.P., New York (1988).

  7. 7. C. C. Wallin, J. J. Gilman, Res. Management 29, 19 (1986);
    alsoC. C. Wallin, J. J. Gilman, Res. Management 21, 34 (1978).

  8. 8. P. Medawar, Memoir of a Thinking Radish, Oxford U.P., Oxford, England (1986), p. 160.

  9. 9. A. J. Lotka, J. Washington Acad. Sci. 16, 317 (1926).

  10. 10. D. J. de Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science… and Beyond, Columbia U.P., New York (1986).

  11. 11. E. W. Montroll, W. W. Badger, Introduction to Quantitative Aspects of Social Phenomena, Gordon and Breach, New York (1974).

  12. 12. J. J. Gilman, A. A. Siczek, Res. Management 28, 29 (1985).

  13. 13. P. F. Drucker, Science 204, 806 (1979). https://doi.org/SCIEAS
    S. Ramo, Sci. Am., May 1989, p. 148.

More about the authors

John J. Gilman, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 44, Number 3

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