Dow gears up for research boom in 1980's: With novel management moves and a 38% R&D budget increase from 1979 to 1981, Dow plans to be on top of wave of new R&D in the 80's

If the 1960's were the big time of basic commercial chemistry and plant scaleup, and the 1970's the heyday of process improvement at some expense to basic research, the 1980's are shaping up as a golden age of new products flowing from revolutionary new science. That's the strategic view at Dow Chemical as it repositions its massive worldwide research and development organization for an expanded research push in the next 10 years. Feeling the time is right for its own corporate purposes and for background political reasons, Dow has created novel R&D management teams, stepped up its already fastgrowing R&D budgets, kept its professional hiring well-backed in the recession, and cast feelers in all directions for ties to new science. "The country is on the threshold of a real boom in new technology. I know the chemical industry is," exudes the just-retired corporate director of R&D at Dow, M. E. (Mac) Pruitt. "I think a ...