professional evaluation of technologybased opportunities.
When World War II ended, the business landscape filled with returning soldiers eager to launch new enterprises. The newly created ARD was determined to ride that wave. Along with Compton, its distinguished founders included Boston Federal Reserve President Ralph Flanders( later a US senator from Vermont), Massachusetts Investment Trust Chairman Merrill Griswold and Harvard Business School Dean Donald K. David. Chosen as its president was Georges Frédéric Doriot, who had been a member of the New Products Committee. Flanders served as acting president until Doriot was released from the Army in December 1946. Doriot remained at the helm throughout ARD’ s 25-year run as an independent company.
The Remarkable and Colorful Georges Doriot
Even if Doriot had never won fame as the“ father of venture capitalism,” he still would have compiled a record of extraordinary achievement. Born in France in 1899, he gained early exposure to manufacturing through his father’ s ownership of the prominent automaker Doriot, Flandrin, and Parant. During World War I, he served in a French artillery vehicle unit and received a battlefield commission as an officer.
Doriot obtained a baccalaureate in science from the University of Paris in 1920. He then went to the United States to pursue his studies on the advice of his father, who had been unsuccessful in attempting to convert his company back to automobile manufacturing after switching to wartime production. In 1921, Doriot entered Harvard Business School( HBS) and ultimately decided to remain in America. After a stint in investment banking, Doriot became HBS’ s assistant dean in 1925. With no prior teaching experience, he was drafted to take over a course that he believed was not being run properly. The following year, he was appointed associate professor of industrial management.
Over the next four decades, Doriot taught nearly 7,000 HBS students. That was with time out during World War II to head the research and development branch of the US Army’ s Military Planning Division of the Office of the Quartermaster
The Corporate Reports Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School
American Research and Development Corporation annual report, 1954.
General.( Doriot had become a naturalized US citizen at the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.)
Innovations that emerged from the R & D unit he led included a lightweight, fiberglass-based plastic armor named Doron in his honor, a forerunner of DuPont’ s Kevlar, and Dow Chemical’ s Saran, used for insulating combat boots and later marketed as Saran Wrap. Doriot rose to the rank of brigadier general. His contributions were recognized with the Distinguished Service Medal and the French Legion of Honor. He was also made a commander of the British Empire.
Doriot’ s contributions outside of ARD did not end there. He helped found the business program for middle management that became known as the Centre de Perfectionnement aux Affaires de Paris in 1929. In 1957, along with two of his former students, he founded Institut européen d’ administration des affaires( INSEAD), a business school modeled on the Harvard Business School. Its MBA program was ranked number two in the world by the Financial Times in 2026. Doriot also helped found Canadian Enterprise Development Corporation, one of the first Canadian venture capital firms, reflecting his conviction that VC should be a global— rather than an exclusively US— project. Along with his wife, née Edna
Allen, he was active in Boston’ s French Library and succeeded her as its president following her death.( Like him, she was named a member of the Legion of Honor.) In addition, Doriot served on the boards of numerous companies, including Kansas City Southern Railroad, Standard Power & Light and McKeesport Tin Plate, while also acting as a consultant to investment banks.
To Doriot, the companies that ARD helped to launch were not just financial investments. He referred to them as his“ children.” Doriot told a reporter,“ When bankers or brokers tell me I should sell an ailing company, I ask them,‘ Would you sell a child running a temperature of 104?’” He viewed it as part of his job to mentor the companies’ leaders through their challenging early years in business.“ Someone, somewhere, is making a product that will make your product obsolete,” he reminded them. Another of his favorite aphorisms was,“ Be friendly but not chummy with your lawyers.”
At HBS, Doriot was affectionately known as“ the General” and became a unique and legendary member of the faculty. Dispensing with the school’ s famous emphasis of the case study method, he structured his Manufacturing course around lectures. This did not mean that students’ exposure to practical matters was neglected, for he required them to engage in field work and write reports on vital business subjects. A number of those“ topic reports” achieved publication and in one of them the student authors coined the term“ automation.”
Doriot, whose initial foray into teaching involved Frederick Winslow Taylor’ s time and motion studies, kept a stopwatch on his desk, explaining,“ Sometimes I use it to see how long it takes someone in a meeting to tell me the same thing three times.” The General deemed it essential to make constructive use of time.“ Happiness,” he maintained,“ does not equal hours of relaxation.”
In an era when the HBS student body was exclusively male, he lectured MBA candidates’ wives on how best to help their husbands’ careers through their encouragement and comportment.“ Your job,” he told them,“ is to change the philosophy of your husbands to that of a businessman rather than that of a student.” At the same time, Doriot was conscious of women pursuing careers of their own, addressing such questions as whether both spouses should work in the same industry. Dorothy Rowe,
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