In 1971, for example, Bill Gore chanced on the company's second largest division on a snow-covered slope in Colorado where he was skiing with friends, including Dr. Ben Eiseman of the Denver General Hospital. "We were just about to start a run," Bill Gore says, "when I absent-mindedly pulled a small tubular section of Gore-tex out of my pocket and looked at it. 'What is that stuff?' Ben asked. So I told him about its properties. 'Feels great,' he said. 'What do you use it for?' 'Got no idea,' I said. 'Well give it to me,' he said, 'and I'll try it in a vascular graft on a pig.' Two weeks later, he called me up. Ben was pretty excited. 'Bill,' he said, 'I put it in a pig and it works. What do I do now?' I told him to get together with Pete Cooper in our Flagstaff plant, and I let them figure it out." Although a major problem would have to be solved four years later, 375,000 patients throughout the world now walk around with Gore-tex vascular grafts. "Cardiovascular disease is one of the major health problems of mankind," says medical products leader Jack Hoover. "The use of Gore-tex to treat it has only just begun."
By 1973, Bob's engineering team had devised machines that could stretch Gore-tex wide enough to cover the standard commercial dimensions of several different fabrics. All their tests indicated that, at long last, the secret of a waterproof, breathable garment had been discovered. Bill Gore couldn't have been happier, but he wasn't going to wear it; he wanted to sleep in it. For years, Bill had yearned for a light, waterproof tent that would save him lower back pain on long mountain treks. Gore-tex looked like the answer to a veteran camper's prayer.
Since Vieve had routinely handcrafted their backpacks and tents, Bill commissioned her to stitch up a tent from sections of Gore-tex he had bonded to mosquito netting. Then they set off for the mountains of the Wind River Range in the wilds of Wyoming. "One night," Bill says, "it started to rain just after we had gone to bed. And it rained harder. Vieve and I felt around the tent and it was bone dry. We were very pleased with ourselves. But then the rain turned partly to hail. The hail punched tiny holes through the Gore-tex, and later there must've been two inches of water in the tent. We didn't sleep well that night."
As it turned out, Bill and Vieve's soggy night at Wind River was more than a temporary inconvenience; it was the first sign that Gore-tex had entered a time of troubles. During the next five years, Gore-tex would suffer a variety of technical growing pains. Some were minor, but others were critical, even potentially fatal to the reputation of a miracle product, and all would test the resiliency of the lattice.
In June 1975, Dr. Charles Campbell, senior resident at the University of Pittsburgh, reported to Jack Hoover that a Gore-tex arterial graft he had placed in a patient had developed an aneurism, a bubblelike protrusion of the arterial wall that meant it wasn't strong enough to withstand the pressure of the blood within it. If the aneurism continued to expand, it would eventually burst, and the patient could die.
The problem had to be solved quickly and permanently if the company's plans for vascular grafts were ever to be realized. "I'm told from time to time," Bill Gore says, "that a lattice organization can't meet a crisis well because it takes too long to reach a consensus when there are no bosses. But this isn't true. Actually, a lattice, by its very nature, works particularly well in a crisis. A lot of useless effort is avoided because there is no rigid management hierarchy to conquer before you can attack a problem."
Only days after his call, Dr. Campbell flew to Newark to present his findings to Bill and Bob Gore and several other associates drawn from production and research. The meeting adjourned after two hours of discussion, and the associates went their seaprate ways to consider solutions. But one of the associates, Dan Hubis, already had an idea he thought might work. If he could wrap another layer of Gore-tex around a section of graft, he reasoned, he might be able to increase the rupture tolerance of the entire section. Hubis, a former Elkton, Md., policeman who had joined Gore in 1966 to work on new production methods, immediately started testing his idea in the lab.
He tried various wrapping techniques, and after each try he forced compressed air through the specimen section to see it if would hold. On his twelfth try, after three hours of work, he found the right method. Hubis had resolved a potentially serious setback in only one afternoon. "It was quick because it had to be," Hubis says."I don't remember any clapping or cheering, but I know we were very happy." Bill Gore was pleased, too; not only was it a noteworthy technical accomplishment, but it also proved the worth of the lattice. "There were several people with different skills all working on a common problem," Bill says."They came together quickly, and no one was slowed down because they had to get the approval of some higher-up before they could proceed. The creativity of such a group is much greater than the sum of its members."
As 1976 began, W. L. Gore & Associates still looked like the wire and cable company founded 18 years earlier. It was more elaborate, of course, with more people, more markets, and a broader product line, but at least 90% of sales and profits were still being drawn from the basic wire and cable business. After several years of research and development, Gore-tex was only a modest success, contributing some $2 million in sales from uses in microfiltration, industrial filter bags, joint sealant, and medical products. But even though Gore & Associates may have looked like the same old company, it didn't look that way for long, because in 1976, Gore-tex took off and took the whole company with it. "From that time," says Shanti Mehta, Gore's financial leader, "the company's sales and earnings have grown at least 35% a year. Gore-tex products were soon contributing almost 50% of our business."
