2. 职称英语
  3. Read the article below about research and development in industry and the questi

Read the article below about research and development in industry and the questi

游客2025-05-19  1
问题 Read the article below about research and development in industry and the questions on the opposite page. For each question 13—18, mark one letter (A, B, C or D) on your Answer Sheet for the answer you choose.
    It is only through Innovation that large companies will be abie to survive, according to Ron Mitsch, vice-chairman of UK-owned industrial giant 3M. However, says Mitsch, it remains difficult to run a truly innovative company. Innovation involves speculation, unproven technologies and unpredictable costs. It takes a lot of managing, because managers really have to be on top of what’s happening. In addition, innovation does not fit easily into the orderly kind of organization that company accountants like. Despite this, Mitsch claims it is an essential policy to pursue.
    The 3M group’s record of growth aiding profitability indicates that it manages the orderly part of the business pretty well. The statistics are big: operations in more than 60 countries, sales in more than 200, around 60,000 products and 70,000 employees. But what makes 3M different is its innovative approach to innovation itself. Although it is a massive multinational with a turnover of $ 15 billion, the whole company is broken down into tiny groups which work together and help each other and are then encouraged to consult internally with the other groups. This positively encourages individual and collaborative research.
    A further encouragement is that all research staff worldwide are expected to work on 3M projects for only 85% of their time; for the remaining 15% of time they are free to pursue ideas of their own, using company facilities. In this time they can work on their own or in a group. One hugely successful project that has come out of this 15% rule is the Post-it note. The idea came from an individual inventor and then, using the business skills of a large organization, was rapidly developed into a major product. The success of the Post-it note proves how profitable the innovative 15% rule can be.
    Ron Mitsch says innovation is at the heart of 3M. In 1996, more than 30% of sales were generated by products less than four years old. He says: "We almost always get into new markets through innovation. We’re very good at adapting these innovations to lots of different markets so we have a high success rate. We take an idea and see how many applications it’s got. Then we try to establish market dominance. We have a tremendous variety of technologies so we can adapt anything but we still need the original ideas to develop."
    In the past year 3M has introduced a group-wide program called Pacing Plus. This means that they are still actively seeking new ideas, but with the difference that they hope many of them will eventually lead to the establishment of completely new business. In this way, 3M will be able to invest in a wide range of markets and even create some new ones.
    This emphasis on innovation creates unusual stresses and strains and makes a company like 3M a difficult business to manage. Technical people at 3M are given a large degree of intellectual freedom, and the company appears to specifically try to recruit people who think for themselves and who don’t necessarily solve things by the traditional routes. The management encourages people to step outside of the security that comes from working in a big, stable group, and then to handle the consequences. So far the mixture of freedom and heavy responsibility seems to work: the 25 research schemes at present under review could generate business worth $ 6 billion a year. [br] The writer says that the Post-it note was invented as a result of______.
选项 A、a researcher’s own initiative
B、research carried out by a group
C、research originally done on another product
D、a manager’s innovative idea
答案 A
解析 文章第三段介绍说：3M所有的研究人员只要把它们85％的时间用于公司的项目(project)中即可；在剩余的15％的时间内，他们可以利用公司的设备按自己的想法去自由工作(free to pursue ideas of theirown)，而Post-in note正是来自于这15％的时间，是一项非常成功的方案。也就是说Post-in note实际上是研究者个人主动开发出来的。
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