WL Gore and Associates

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W. L. Gore and Associates is a company most commonly known for its Gore-Tex fabrics.

The company was founded in 1958 by Bill Gore and his wife Genevieve in Newark, Delaware. Gore had been a research scientist working with fluoropolymers at DuPont. He developed a process for insulating electrical wire with DuPont's Teflon, and this became Multi-tet, the company's first product.

Robert W. Gore, son of the founders, discovered that rapidly stretching PTFE under the right conditions created a very strong, microporous material. Today the company's fluoropolymer products provide innovative solutions throughout industry, in next-generation electronics, for medical products, and with high-performance fabrics. Robert W. Gore was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame [1] in 2006 for the invention of GoreTex (Patent Number 3,953,566 [2]).

The Gore Method

W.L. Gore has repeatedly appeared on the Top 100 Best Companies" list both in The United States [3] and in Europe [4]. At least part of this must be attributed to "The Gore Method". Bill Gore created a flat lattice organization. There are no chains of command nor predetermined channels of communication. There are no bosses. There are instead "leaders". Associates choose to follow leaders rather than have bosses assigned to them. As noted in the Mutualism section of Anarcho-socialism,

The model followed by the corporation WL Gore and Associates, inventor of Gore-Tex fabrics, is also similar to mutualism as there is no chain of command and salaries are determined collectively by the workers.

Product Line The W.L. Gore and Associates product line has grown over the years at least in part due to their nurturing of associates who wish to pursue their ideas. Associates may spend ten percent of their time pursuing new ideas. Their product line includes ...