What kind of employees did Skunk Works hire during the Cold War?

Skunk Works had developed a unique culture—one that motivated employees to develop remarkably creative products. The employees worked on projects that were personally interesting to them and they had a clear design goal. Major technical decisions were quickly provided by [management] as required, to maintain the flow of development. Lockheed management would rarely challenge these decisions and designers did not worry about backtracking or nefarious political consequences.

The designers worked in an environment where paper work was shunned, sketches were preferred over time-consuming, detailed drawings, and small groups eliminated major communication problems. They were isolated from the Lockheed parent company’s bureaucracy, and worked with the esprit de corps of an organization entrusted with vital government needs. The designers were generalists who were selected because they had a wide range of experiences within technology. Skunk Works managers tried to avoid people who viewed all problems through their own field of specialization.

Kelly Johnson defined the organization that he created as “a concentration of a few good people solving problems far in advance—and at a fraction of the cost—of other groups in the aircraft industry by applying the simplest, most straightforward methods possible to develop and produce new projects. All it is really is the application of common sense to some pretty tough problems” (Johnson 171). Gary Ervin, a vice president of Skunk Works, corroborated the concept of a critical mass of suitably talented people. Ervin claimed that the Skunk Works’ creative and productive environment resulted from small groups of scientists and engineers who were selected based on their propensity to be “free thinkers, creative, and don’t let conventional boundaries get in their way” (Sawyer 2). A critical mass of talent can be a powerful force, as is demonstrated by such collections of talent ranging from the artists in Paris during the 1860s to the engineers in Silicon Valley during the 1970s.

This is an excerpt from my new book:

"Intense Design: Product DesignLessons From Cold War Era Skunk Works" 

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