Bob Taylor liked to tell people that his style of managing CSL combined the best features of all the research labs he had ever known. But its structure sprouted largely from a small kernel: the management principles developed at ARPA. Taylor’s predecessors had bequeathed him the axiom that the best way to manage research was to select the best people in a given field and set them loose. Scientists with the lofty skills ARPA demanded, Ivan Sutherland said, “are people who have ideas you can either back or not, but they are quite difficult to influence. You can maybe convince them that
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