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This book relies predominantly on a number of primary materials: Georges Doriot’s voluminous notes on American Research and Development Corporation’s operations and meetings; the annual reports of American Research and Development, European Enterprise Development, and Canadian Enterprise Development; U.S. military documents from the Library of Congress and National Archives; and manuscript collections, oral histories, letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper and magazine stories, newsletters, pamphlets, DVDs, VHS cassettes, interviews, and personal observations of Doriot’s homes and workplaces.
Several sources merit special mention. First and foremost, this book could not have been written without the personal papers of Georges Doriot, which are housed at the M.I.T. Entrepreneurship Center Library (and on loan from the French Library and Cultural Center of Boston). Doriot was an extraordinary record keeper who seemingly documented every moment of the history of American Research and Development. The papers comprise more than twelve hundred pages from eight different books. I owe considerable thanks to my first research assistant, Tess Oliver, for her diligence in corralling these papers and sending them to me. They helped jump-start my research, serving as a touchstone throughout the entire process.
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Doriot did not act alone. His wife Edna Allen supported him every step of the way, allowing him to focus obsessively on his intellectual and commercial pursuits. A pretty, intelligent, and caring American woman, Allen was a research assistant at the Harvard Business School when she first laid eyes on Doriot. For the next forty-eight years, Edna was his devoted wife and closest friend, and the couple enjoyed a lifelong storybook romance. Doriot would often write love poems about Edna. And the favor was returned. “When he went on a trip he’d find a love note in his pajamas,” says Olsen.
Despite Doriot’s singular talents, he was far from perfect. ARD should never have been incorporated as a publicly traded company. Doriot never groomed a successor to take over the firm. And Doriot never figured out a way to appease government regulators, who repeatedly threatened to put ARD out of business. The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), to cite one example, ruled that ARD officers could not hold stock options in client companies, which meant Doriot could not attract the best and brightest talent. The tension grew so great that in 1965 the SEC even raided its offices to conduct a “surprise audit.” Doriot was so enraged at the SEC that he kept a file of vituperative letters addressed to the agency that were stamped: “Not sent—on advice of counsel.”
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