Tradition prescribes the communication of good research by a written report, but adequate and timely reporting is the weakest link in industrial communication systems. Two mistakes made in trying to solve this problem are spending money instead of thought on communicating and assuming that writing is the same as communicating. Management must tell people what kinds of reports are needed for their decision making, establish the climate for motivating appropriate upward and horizontal flow of information, and respond to what is communicated.

New technologies arising from inventions and developments have characterized every known civilization since antiquity. The concept of invention per se, however, evolved slowly, from the granting of franchises in ancient Greece to the granting of monopolies by Florence and Venice in the 15th century. Patent systems as one knows them today arose from the laws of England, France, Germany and the United States from the 15th and 18th century and from the more definitive laws of the 19th century. The past decade has been marked by the introduction of an international classification system and the concept of an international patent system.