"Adventurers from New York to Nepal have long appreciated Gore-Tex. The material's seemingly paradoxical ability to keep the weather out while enabling perspiration to escape enables a wide range of functional and comfortable outerwear. Noting that the firm which delivered this innovation, W. L. Gore & Associates, was established in 1958, we take a closer look at how the company has stayed entrepreneurial for such a long time.

No Climate for Innovation
W. L. "Bill" Gore started his career at DuPont in 1945 and joined a team finding applications for a novel polymer called polytetrafluoroethylene—Teflon, to the rest of us. Bill experimented with the material as a tough, heat-resistant coating for wiring, an application he felt offered great potential given the likely rise of the computer.
Convinced of its technical merits, he tried unsuccessfully to persuade DuPont to develop Teflon-coated cable. Frustrated, in 1958 he created his own firm with his wife Vieve in their basement. W. L. Gore & Associates' cable product created a market. Within ten years, the firm employed more than 200 people, and Gore cable was used on a mission to the moon."