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Little Helps
KENNETH .1. ROBINSON
THANK heaven for Little, boys. I refer to the boys who work for the Arthur D. Little set-up in Cam- bridge, Massachusetts. Their life is a dedicated hostility to the Organisa- tion Man; yet he is often their client, and very often their job involves overcoming his inertia. They are, in fact (all twelve of them), mem• hers of that growing .profession in the industrial World known as 'R and D'---Research and De- velopment and they claim they can deal with almost any problem in almost any branch of science or engineering. As an anti-Organisation Man who has endured all the rigours of a demo- cratic body constipated by committees, I feel I Want to cheer when 1 see, in Industrial Design magazine, that ADl. include 'some disorganisa- tion men who earn their living by challenging every received notion within slaying distaff AM. make a practice of 'questioning -tatried Maxims.' They began this thirty years ago when someone in the business was irritated by the popular, dogmatic assertion that you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. One I.ittle man had a busy day finding out how the silkworm does its lob. Apparently the liquid which becomes silk is. at some point in the process, very much like glue. And a sow's ear, being mostly gristle and skin, is a natural raw material for glue. So it only re- mained for the ADL boys to find a chemical process for transforming the glue made from a sow's ear into silk. This they did. And the purse they made now rests in a chemical museum as a symbol of their 'dedication to pure rational inquiry.'
Until recently the Little technique (which is nothing more than common sense backed, occa- sionally, by specialised knowledge) was used largely to help firms with organisation problems. -Sometimes the problems are complicated, as when it is found that a manufacturing firm is floundering because its chairman is obstructive; sometimes they are naively simple, as when the operator of a lift truck is advised to carry a spare tank of the gas it uses to avoid wasting time every time he runs out of the stuff But now ADL is going in for consumer research, and the first product it has inspired will probably be with us before long - a paper drinking-cup which keeps cool outside when it is filled with hot liquid. This, curiously enough. was ADL's solution to quite a different problem. They were asked by a com- pany president how he could spend a few million dollars on capital investment. Four months of research led them to recommend that a paper cup for hot and cold drinks should be manufactured. After the recommendation had been accepted they went ahead and developed a new kind of plastic coating in their chemistry department, and subsequently produced prototype machinery for the coated cup in their engineering section.
This extraordinary organisation is only one• of many in America which have managed to find a way of using the creative mind properly. The two chiefs of the inventions-to-order department at ADL are fascinated by 'the laws of the creative process' which they believe are essentially the same whether the result is a poem, a painting, a mathematical 'theory or (their latest product) a really good zipper for a space suit. They believe, too, that 'the creative process, heretofore con- sidered the unique property of individual artists and scientists, can be developed and put to effec- tive use by groups of talented people bringing fertile imaginations to bear on the same problem.'
ADL sounds like the dream-job for the creative man who wants the maximum financial.security with the minimum of interference. In the mean- time the more conventional American drawing- board continues to giv: us fascinating new pro- ducts. Among the latest batch mentioned in Industrial Design is a polyester pack for 'boil-in- the-bag' frankfurters (you decide how many you want and tear along the perforated line); poly- ester pouches filled with whisky (just tear off the corner when you want a swig), and invisible arm- chairs of clear plastic, described rather ambigu- ously as just the thing 'for people who like un- obstructed views.' Best of all there is a new electric light bulb which has an unusual advan- tage: 'a hot lamp when dunked into cold water will not crack.'
What do the ADL boys think of that one? Will it, perhaps, remind their creative imagination of the urgent need for a grand piano that does not go out of tune when dragged across 'a ploughed field?
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