Oral History of Robert Everett - Computer History Museum

Oral History of Robert Everett
Everett: For the whole technical organization. After a couple of years, I became vice-president for
Technical Operations, and then a few years later I became executive vice-president, and then president.
Hendrie: And then you became responsible for the business?
Everett: Yes. I felt pretty responsible before because the technical organization was most of it. As an
FFRDC and a non-profit and so on, the emphasis is on the technology and the job you do for the
customer. And the finances and things like that in marketing and whatnot are a different matter.
Hendrie: And much more modest than in a conventional business.
Everett: Yes. I don't know how MITRE would do if it had to compete in an industrial world. I think it would
depend on how rapidly we could build the skills that are necessary to live in that world before technical
people ran out of work and collapsed.
Hendrie: I don't believe, I actually don't know whether they are non-profits but other primarily technical
organizations that have tried to foray into the commercial world, such as BB&N [Bolt Beranek & Newman]
that have found it very difficult.
Everett: Another thing that I think would make it very difficult, if that happened and you sat down and
said, well, it isn't that I have a company that hasn’t got all the things that it needs. It's that I own this
tremendous technical organization. And MITRE is like a huge multi-billion dollar organization. It's like the
engineering arm of this organization. It just doesn't have all the production and the marketing and all that
jazz, service. If you're going to make any money, you don't make it out of an engineering organization you
make it out of production. So the thing to do would be undoubtedly to combine with somebody that had
the production capability in a worldwide service organization and so on. Then provide them with a strong,
coherent, know-how-to-work-together technical organization. That would give them a better chance, I'd
think.
Hendrie: And make some great products.
Everett: Yes.
Hendrie: Because you make more money repeatedly selling the intellectual…the fruits of your intellectual
endeavor rather than just selling it once and going on and doing another thing.
Everett: People make a good living by giving advice, but companies don't. Individuals do.
Hendrie: There are a couple of other things that I wanted to touch on. I read somewhere that you, in your
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