Abstract
THE discussion on September 5 in Section G (Engineering) of the British Association which followed Sir Arthur Fleming's presidential address to the Section on "Bridging the Gap between Science and Industry"like so many present-day discussions, centred largery on the question of staff. Sir Arthur had emphasized that the rate of industrial progress depends on both the acquistition of new knowledge and its effective use. Most speeches in the discussion were concerned with the question of the effective use, whether of new or of old knowledge, and of the dependence of this upon not merely the scientific or technical but also the managerial staff. Sir Andrew McCance, who opened the discussion, believes that the most serious question is the time taken for ideas already known and accepted by the scientific world to penetrate into that of industry and win acceptance and application. While this may be only a temporary phase, it will persist until every manager receives some technical training before he enters industry and until every scientific worker realizes that in management there is a skill which must be learned like every other skill. Sir Andrew considers that specialization is a mabi cause of the sluggishness with which scientific methods have been applied to British industry ; but he also mentioned one industry in which more than four hundred firms between them employ on their staffs fewer than twenty technically trained men.
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The Gap between Science and Industry. Nature 164, 565–566 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164565a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164565a0