Notable Quotes

Words to remember (or borrow) on the business of science

This issue: What's good for General Motors...

Alfred P. Sloan Jr., 1875-1966.

"Out of research our economy needs a continuous flow of new industries in order that we may advance our standard of living and also create additional employment. But that is not all. We must encourage technological progress whereby things currently useful may be produced at lower costs, hence distributed at lower selling prices, thus bringing them within the reach of a constantly increasing number. In other words, more things for more people in more places. Technological progress - and it is a pity more do not appreciate it - is the one sound approach to increased employment and higher wages. There is no other way."

Alfred P. Sloan Jr,, former Chairman, CEO & President, General Motors Corp. From his memoirs, "Adventures of a White-Collar Man," New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1941.

When Sloan started in the US auto industry in 1898 as a ball-bearing supplier, it was much like the biotech industry today or the Internet industry a decade ago: high-tech, high-cost and high-risk. Sloan, along with Henry Ford, used R&D not just to make better cars, but to make the making of cars better - and it's his reflections on the role of technology, economy and society that are most memorable. His 1941 memoirs make good reading even today. (Hard to find except in a good library; but his better-known, "My Years with General Motors," is still in print.)