It is rare to find a research laboratory that is productive and in which investigators are happy; the two adjectives appear to be antagonistic. Productive scientists are frequently driven, compulsive people who are not happy. There are productive slave shops of exceedingly unhappy, harshly driven, junior investigators doing the work for their master. However, only in rare cases is such unhappy productivity creative and original. To foster creative productivity, the management of the laboratory should provide a number of ingredients that combine to foster happiness: peace of mind, mutual intellectual stimulation and its emotional underpinnings of friendship, mutual respect, egalitarianism, absence of interference and micromanagement, freedom in the choice of research subject and methodology, and a minimum of rules.