Any design based partially or wholly in the abstract is a gamble. Concrete certainty lies only in research, but this costs money. Happy is the designer who discovers that all he needs has already been done and paid for by someone else. Otherwise he must do it himself and it will probably cost twice as much as he anticipates at the outset. Good research often costs a good deal of money, but spending a good deal of money does not automatically produce good research.

During the war I was given a research-design job of such priority that I could demand almost anything and get it instantly. But there was one condition, and one only, that I must fulfil. I must spend £156 a day. If I was not doing this the official attitude was that I was not working fast enough. So, each day, one first decided how to use up the money, and then got down to serious work. And this worship of the magic of money still survives, despite the fact that, more often, the reverse is true. In industry time is money; in research money, unwisely ladled out, means more time. Research on a shoestring would not take so long; there are less strings to it, and less possibilities of tangles. But there is a danger in going to the opposite extreme and arbitrarily reducing a research quota for economy reasons.