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Struggling to Crack. Copeland is guiding his company into the creation of yet newer products under the spur of the sharpest and most sophisticated competition in the chemical industry's history. The glamorous growth of the industry—it has expanded 126% in the last decade and is growing more than twice as fast as all U.S. industry—has lured so many newcomers into the field that nearly half the nation's 500 biggest manufacturing companies now make chemicals, including such unlikely firms as General Foods and National Distillers. Though Du Pont is far ahead of its closest competitors, Union Carbide (1963 sales: $805 million) and Monsanto ($586 million), the $35 billion-a-year business is so broad and crowded that Du Pont accounts for only 7½% of it. The company might like to have a larger share, but U.S. trustbusters, who have made Du Pont a prime target for half a century, have ruled out practically any expansion through merger.
Demand for chemicals is towering because the chemical business supplies so much to the entire U.S. economy; it is the only industry in the U.S. that sells to all of the nation's 79 basic industries. Hardly aware of it, the average American this year will "consume" 57 Ibs. of ammonia, 59 Ibs. of caustic soda, 77 Ibs. of chlorine and 194 Ibs. of sulphuric acid. Every important invention of the modern era—from nuclear energy and jet planes to drip-dry and color TV—is dependent on the modern chemical industry.
Freedom to Explore. Though the U.S. has had a chemical industry ever since John Winthrop's firm started turning out saltpeter 15 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, half of today's chemical products have been developed since 1950. With so many new firms in the field, all struggling to crack or duplicate their competitors' secret formulas, no company can count on holding on very long to exclusive markets for the products that it invents. Du Pont had nylon all to itself for 14 years, but its period of exclusivity shrank to ten years for Dacron, four years for orlon—and is diminishing fast.
To keep pace, Du Pont's scientists have made themselves into the industry's master technicians. The Du Pont clan has never forgotten that the key to its 162-year success has been its high respect for scientific competence and its ability to create the atmosphere for discovery. Says President Copeland: "We have never treated scientists as crazy, long-haired guys in the back room." On the contrary, five of the company's eight vice presidents and six of its twelve general managers hold doctorates in science and engineering.
The company's 4,000 scientists are given broad freedom to explore the bluest yonders of research, have a budget of $58 million a year for "pioneering" research alone. Top technicians enjoy as much prestige as managers do, but none of the administrative burdens: some of them are not given any company assignments at all, but experiment with anything that interests them. Says Du Pont Engineer Nathaniel Wyeth, brother of Painter Andrew Wyeth: "I spend 30% of my time not in a lab but in my office, often just thinking."