To the average
citizen, bootlegging conjures up visions of
Prohibition-era Chicago, hidden stills in
the mountains of Tennessee, and fast boats
delivering illicit spirits at dusk to
numerous ports on the North Shore of Long
Island. Scholars who study word origins
attribute the term to the custom of carrying
whiskey flasks that might otherwise be
confiscated inside one’s boot — a practice
said to be commonplace during the
Prohibition years. More recently,
bootlegging refers to the practice of
selling someone else’s intellectual property
without permission or compensation.
The public is
less aware that the term is also used by
scientists and engineers to describe work
that has not been officially sanctioned by
one’s department or by the parent company.
More often than not, the practice occurs at
the research and development stage, and
involves an idea or a discovery whose
ultimate value cannot be readily predicted.
The likelihood of it reaching a successful
outcome is usually unclear, as is often its
relationship to company objectives.
Nevertheless, bootleg projects may proceed
in complete secrecy or with implicit
approval when the boss elects to “look the
other way.” In either case, the bootlegger
must work with a minimum of resources and,
usually, no extra funding. Often he or she
must devote “slack time” and unpaid overtime
to the project. Benefits to the bootlegger
include no supervision of the bootlegged
project and freedom from the bureaucracy
inherent in a formally approved project (the
need to define research objectives, write
progress reports, fill out timesheets, get
step-by-step approvals, etc.).
Bootlegging is
almost always instigated by an individual,
as opposed to a team. When Gordon Teal’s
recommendation to his management at Bell
Labs that single-crystal germanium could be
produced met with a lukewarm reception, he
did not give up. He continued to experiment
in true bootleg fashion, and was eventually
given access to the lab’s crystal forming
equipment from 4:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. After
months of after-hours work, Teal’s
single-crystal germanium was able to provide
minority carrier lifetimes ten-fold greater
than that possible in polycrystalline
material, and the junction transistor was
made possible.
A number of
high-tech companies subscribe to “permitted
bootlegging.” Generally, this means that a
certain percentage (e.g., 15 percent) of a
technical staff member’s time can be spent
on a project of his own choosing. However,
in practice it seems that very few
researchers avail themselves of this
opportunity, usually because all their time
is required on assigned research. Then, too,
once an engineer is known to be working on a
“permitted bootleg” project, his boss begins
to ask “How’s it going?” and a bit of the
unwanted bureaucracy begins to creep in. So
even at companies like HP and 3M, where
“permitted bootlegging” has been endorsed by
management, researchers may elect instead to
go the “true bootleg” route so they can
retain the freedom to control their own
progress (or lack of it) without fear of
criticism.
Learning
from the Bootlegger
Some research
managers note that good “normal” R&D often
employs several of the practices of
bootlegging, and they suggest that if it
doesn’t, it should. First, it encourages
bottom-up ideas and input. Too much planning
and project management hinders innovation,
one manager insists. Bootleggers also find
ways (because they must) to save time and
resources. They manage to avoid costly and
time-consuming organizational encumbrances.
Appropriately,
when the U.S. War Department in 1943
challenged Lockheed to build a 600-mph
jet-fighter prototype in six months, the
company set up a pseudo-bootleg operation in
a rented circus tent next to an obnoxious
plastics factory. (It became known as the
Skunk Works, after Hairless Joe’s “skonk
works” in Al Capp’s L’il Abner comic strip.
Hairless Joe boiled dead skunks and old
shoes in his still to produce “kickapoo joy
juice.”) The project concluded with the
completion of a prototype P-80 in only 143
days, and Lockheed authorized the Skunk
Works to continue on a shoe-string budget.
Lockheed’s chief engineer, Kelly Johnson,
would spend an hour or so each day with his
young designers and engineers. By the 1950s,
the Skunk Works had moved from its tent to
an old bomber production hangar, where,
gaining entrance through open hangar doors,
birds would swoop down at the designers’
drawing boards. Its efficiency and design
successes continued.
When Data
General embarked on the development of the
Eagle computer, famously documented in the
Pulitzer-Prize-winning book by Tracy Kidder,
the project had many elements that would
warm the heart of a seasoned bootlegger. To
historians, the project’s leader, Tom West,
seemed to have all the characteristics of a
bootlegging honcho. The project was secret.
It was a privilege to be recruited to be
part of it. Those who worked on it put their
lives on hold. They would not mention their
work outside the group. Meeting self-imposed
deadlines was important. Working long hours
was the norm. Keeping costs to a minimum was
standard procedure (“Make do” was the motto.
West once turned down the request for a new
piece of test equipment, saying that the
required tests could be performed by means
of extra overtime, which would cost
nothing.).
While the
formal definition of bootlegging suggests
that it is either illicit or clandestine, or
possibly both, as practiced in the
engineering world its clandestine aspect is
likely to overshadow its illicit
implications. It is often done in secrecy
for the purposes of concealment or even
deception, but its “illicit” aspect may be
definitional only, as in the case of waiving
certain standard departmental or company
procedures, which may prove to be benign or
even beneficial.
Those who
instigate or work on a successful bootlegged
project seem to draw recognition that
exceeds that which befalls those involved in
a successful company-defined project. And
retelling the story of a bootlegged success
helps challenge and inspire future
generations of engineers.
Resources
-
Augsdorfer,
P., Forbidden Fruit: An analysis of
bootlegging, uncertainty, and learning
in corporate R&D, Aldershot/Ashgate
Publishing, 1996.
-
Wolff, M.F.,
To Innovate Faster, Try the Skunk
Works, Research Technology
Management, Sep-Oct, 1987.
-
Thompson,
V.A., Bureaucracy and Innovation,
University of Alabama Press, 1969.
-
Kidder, T.,
The Soul of a New Machine, Little
Brown, 1981; Modern Library, 1997.
-
Goldstein,
A., “Finding the Best Material: Gordon
Teal as Inventor and Manager,” in
Sparks of Genius: Portraits of
Electrical Engineering Excellence,
ed. F. Nebeker, IEEE Press, 1984.
-
Teal, G.
K., “Single Crystals of Germanium and
Silicon—Basic to the Transistor and
Integrated Circuit,” IEEE
Transactions on Electron Devices,
July 1976.
-
Augsdorfer,
P., The Manager as Pirate: An
Inspection of the Gentle Art of
Bootlegging, Creative and Innovation
Management, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1994.
-
Abetti, P.,
Underground Innovation in Japan: The
Development of Toshiba’s Word Processor
and Laptop Computer, Creativity and
Innovation Management, Vol. 6, No. 3,
1997.
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