When analyzed together, they confirmed the hypotheses that Armen Alchian had first made in 1953 about the dangers of applying systems analysis to weapons acquisition programs in which research and development figured heavily. Moreover, these case studies supported the Klein group’s hypothesis that funding numerous small, comparatively inexpensive experimental programs was superior to funding a single, highly specified development program run on the basis of concurrent engineering principles… Under the provocative title “A Radical Proposal for R. and D.,” Klein told the readers of Fortune, “We need more competition, duplication, and ‘confusion’ in our military research and development programs,” not less. His theme harkened back to Alchian’s first musings:
“Better planning, stricter control from the top, elimination of the “wasteful duplication” of interservice competition – this sums up the general belief on what we must do about military research and development if we are not to be fatally out-distanced by the Russians.
“The truth is precisely the reverse. The fact is that military research and development in this country is now suffering from too much direction and control. There are too many decision makers, and too many obstacles are placed in the way of getting new ideas into development. R and D is being crippled by the official refusal to recognize that technological progress is highly unpredicatable, by the delusion that we can advance rapidly and economically by planning the future in detail.”
That was from an excellent chapter from David A. Hounshell,“The Medium is the Message, or How Context Matters: The RAND Corporation Builds an Economics of Innovation, 1946-1962.” Found in Systems, Experts, and Computers. Not much to add, other than the fact that 60+ years later we still have not taken seriously what Alchian and many others had been saying. Alchian called it a “radical” proposal. But it more or less follows the tradition of innovation from WWII and before. The *real* radical proposal for R&D was by Charles Hitch, Vannevar Bush, and others who demanded putting R&D into a planning and control straight-jacket. We still live with that legacy.
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