Doriot Helps Channel Cash Into Science

Business School theory isn't just theory. It pays off.

Three years ago, George F. Doriot, professor of Industrial Management at the Business School joined and advised a group of industrialists, bankers, statesmen who were forming a firm to invest free capital in new-process laboratory science.

Last week the firm, American Research and Development issued a prospectus to potential investors which reported its success and the accomplishments of the 13 new industrial processes which it has financed.

The theory behind American Research and Development is this: researches in complex industrial sciences which require much experimentation often bog down becase layman businessmen with venture capital, unable to estimate the possibilities of success in scientific projuects, shy away from them.

Hence a firm which has science experts on its staff is needed to direct money, for hesitant investors, into enterprises which scientists feel have good chances of being fruitful. That's just the kind of firm Doriot's baby, American Research and Development is.

Thus far American Research and Development has invested in a Mississippi enterprise using high-pressure hydraulics in pumps and motors, aviation and tank degreasing processes, a Texas frozen shrimp business, a process that converts electrical energy into heat for industrial use, an da method of making a flexible tubing to carry hot and cold air.

Several projects, which American Research and Development supports, whose practical application seems less immediate are: a new process for making instruments for spectrochemistry, and detection of radio-activity, a device for demineralizing water by ion exchange, an adaption of high voltage generators to radiation therapy, and an application of the jet propulsion to house heating.

A tuna fish canning business in Sames and the development of super strength glues are also on the list of enterprises that American Research and Development is connected with.

Dr. Karl T. Compton, the former president of MIT, Senator Ralph E. Flanders (R) of Vermont are among the supporters of American Research and Development.

Doriot expressed interest in the relations of science and business last year when he stumped for the construction of a $10,000,000 Army laboratory on the banks of the Charles near Harvard. The Army research lab would have investigated, among other things, the relation of man's efficiency in relation to his environment.