The Business of Research
RCA and the VideoDisc

This book looks at how RCA shaped a sophisticated consumer electronics technology in a research and development effort that spanned fifteen years.

Margaret B. W. Graham (Author)

9780521368216, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 January 1989

274 pages, 17 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.38 kg

"The history she presents is essentially a tale of management. Yet it will be valuable to historians of technology in heightening our sensitivity to corporate policies and politics that affect the conduct of industrial R&D." Technology and Culture

The story of the RCA VideoDisc is a rare inside look at a company and the way it conducts the complex process of science-based innovation. For nearly fifty years the RCA name was synonymous with innovation in the industries it helped to build - radio and television broadcasting and manufacturing, and electronics. This book, first published in 1986, presents an absorbing account of how RCA shaped a sophisticated consumer electronics technology in a research and development effort that spanned fifteen years. We see how the company's history, its structure, its technical capability, and its competition all influenced the choices that were made in moving VideoDisc from laboratory to development group to market, and ultimately to withdrawal from the marketplace. Graham's book seeks to examine the nature of science-based innovation as a management problem. It also describes the complex workings of a large corporate R&D organization and the relationship that exists between it and the other components of a major diversified corporation. Above all RCA and the VideoDisc shows that there is nothing innate about the ability to innovate technologically.

Editors' preface
Preface and acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Selectavision VideoDisc: opportunity and risk
2. David Sarnoff: industrial entrepreneur
3. Research as prime mover
4. Laboratory as entrepreneur: videoplayer research begins
5. Selectavision Holotape: RCA's professional innovation
6. Everything ventured
7. All in the family
8. VideoDisc in the public eye
9. RCA's 'Manhattan Project'
10. On the market
11. Managing R&D: lessons from RCA
Appendix
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], History of the Americas [HBJK]