Recommended resources on successful industrial and applied research labs. I highly recommend these materials. Additional suggestions are greatly appreciated. Also, is the perception that their golden age has passed accurate, or has there been a structural shift in how they operate?
- Dealers of Lightning. The definitive book about PARC.
- Inside PARC: the ‘information’ architects (IEEE Spectrum, Oct 1985). Good article about PARC.
- Interview with Bob Taylor (and another), who ran the PARC CS Lab.
- The Idea Factory. The definitive book about Bell Labs. (There should be more…)
- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering. Only indirectly about Bell Labs but so good that you should read it anyway.
- Tuxedo Park. Book about the MIT Rad Lab, among other things. (Also worth reading Endless Frontier. Broader influence of NDRC is underestimated, as far as I can tell.)
- MIT’s Building 20: “The Magical Incubator”. Transcript of a talk about Building 20.
- Funding Breakthrough Research: Promises and Challenges of the “ARPA Model”. An analysis of what the ARPA model is and why it might work.
- The Dream Machine. Book about ARPA, Licklider, and the creation of the internet.
- The Power of the Context. Alan Kay’s reflections on ARPA and PARC.
- The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Book about the Manhattan Project.
- Skunk Works. The Lockheed Martin facility behind the U-2, SR-71, etc. (See also: Kelly Johnson’s 14 Rules, Kelly Johnson’s own memoir, Augustine’s Laws, Boyd, and National Defense.)
- Organizing Genius: an exploration of commonalities across the Manhattan Project, Black Mountain College, Skunk Works, etc. Demis from DeepMind commented that it accords with how he manages the company.
- Sidewinder. A history of the development of the Sidewinder missile and of the China Lake Navy research lab.
- Scene of Change. Personal account from Rockefeller Foundation’s Warren Weaver. (Worked with Bush at NDRC during WWII; helped fund Green Revolution; funded most of the Nobel-winning molecular biologists.) Worth a quick skim—some good passages.
- Alvarez: Adventures Of A Physicist. Luis Alvarez’s first-hand account of participating in the development of GCA, radar, and the Manhattan Project.
- Doing the Impossible. How George Mueller managed the Apollo Program.