Georges Doriot

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Georges F. Doriot (September 1899 – June 1987) was one of the first American venture capitalists. In 1946, he founded American Research and Development Corporation, the first publicly owned venture capital firm.

[edit] Biography

Born in Paris, France in 1899, Doriot enlisted in the French army in 1920.

He immigrated to America to earn an MBA and stayed on, becoming a professor at the Harvard Business School in 1926. He became a U.S. citizen in 1940 and the following year was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Quartermaster Corps. As Director of the Military Planning Division, he worked on military research, development and planning, eventually being promoted as high as brigadier general.

In 1946 he returned to Harvard and the same year he founded American Research and Development Corporation (AR&D), the first publicly owned venture capital firm.

In 1957, he founded INSEAD, now one of the major business schools, with a group of his former Harvard MBA students.

In 1972, he merged AR&D with Textron after investing in over 150 companies. Along the way, the Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts may have been AR&D's most successful investment and until his death, Doriot remained friends with Ken Olsen, Digital's founder.

Doriot died of lung cancer in 1987 in Boston, Massachusetts.

[edit] Legacy

The Doriot Climatic Chambers at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center, Natick, Massachusetts were named in his honor in 1994. (During his time in the US Army, Doriot had written and spoken about the need for an "Institute of Man" for the testing of soldiers and their equipment at environmental extremes. The DCCs are seen as a partial fulfillment of that vision.)