And within a matter of months, the group had pulled off at least three major breakthroughs. These were made possible to a large extent by a refreshing show of corporate flexibility on the part of DuPont management—flexibility that permitted a kind of interdepartmental science networking not often seen in large-company environments.
Although DuPont has never been in the business of selling products that take advantage of superconductivity technology, the program that got underway last year was not its first foray into this field. In the mid-1960s, the company had launched an extensive effort pertaining to superconductors, a totally untargeted research project focusing on metal oxides and not aimed at any particular applications. By the mid- 1970s, however, progress had come to a standstill, the energy crisis had drawn many of DuPont’s scientists into what the company considered more important areas of research, and the project was nixed.
But the corporate ...
