The Importance of Organizational Culture in the Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project had a very specific purpose with a defined end point. Oppenheimer and Groves weren't designing a factory for repeatable innovation like something like Bell Labs. I think the scientists who were working in all these various places generally believed that when the war was over they would no longer work on atomic bombs. So many of these guys told me, you know, it was almost a spiritual calling to be a physicist before the war.