The linear model of innovation: Maurice Holland and the research cycle

In 1928, Maurice Holland, Director of the Engineering and Industrial Research Division at the US National Research Council, produced a paper on what he called the ‘research cycle’. He portrayed the development of modern industries as a series of sequential steps from basic research to commercialization of technological inventions. The present article documents the source or context of the research cycle, the arguments on which it relies, and the use to which it was put, namely persuading more industrialists to build research laboratories in order to accelerate the development of industry. It suggests that Holland turned a frequently heard but poorly formalized argument into a ‘theory’, paving the way for what came to be called ‘the linear model of innovation’.