R&D management is the discipline of designing and leading R&D processes, managing R&D organizations, and ensuring smooth transfer of new know-how and technology to other groups or departments involved in innovation. [1] [2]
R&D management can be defined as where the tasks of innovation management (i.e., creating and commercializing inventions) meet the tasks of technology management (i.e., external and internal creation and retention of technological know-how). [3] It covers activities such as basic research, fundamental research, technology development, advanced development, concept development, new product development, process development, prototyping, R&D portfolio management, technology transfer, etc., but generally is not considered to include technology licensing, innovation management, IP management, corporate venturing, incubation, etc. as those are sufficiently independent activities that can be carried out without the presence of a R&D function in a firm. [4]
Few dedicated management models for R&D exist. Among the more popularized ones are Arthur D. Little's Third generation R&D management, [5] the Development funnel, [6] the Phase–gate model All these models are concerned with improving R&D performance and result productivity, managing R&D as a process, and providing the R&D function with an environment in which the inherent technological and market uncertainties can be managed.
The Path to Developing Successful New Products [7] a joint research by MIT & McKinsey & Co. points out three key practices that can play critical role in R&D Management: Talk to the customer, Nurture a project culture, Keep it focused.
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Associations and communities
In business theory, disruptive innovation is innovation that creates a new market and value network or enters at the bottom of an existing market and eventually displaces established market-leading firms, products, and alliances. The term, "disruptive innovation" was popularized by the American academic Clayton Christensen and his collaborators beginning in 1995, but the concept had been previously described in Richard N. Foster's book "Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage" and in the paper Strategic Responses to Technological Threats.
A business model describes how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts. The model describes the specific way in which the business conducts itself, spends, and earns money in a way that generates profit. The process of business model construction and modification is also called business model innovation and forms a part of business strategy.
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity, realizing or redistributing value". Others have different definitions; a common element in the definitions is a focus on newness, improvement, and spread of ideas or technologies.
New product development (NPD) or product development in business and engineering covers the complete process of launching a new product to the market. Product development also includes the renewal of an existing product and introducing a product into a new market. A central aspect of NPD is product design. New product development is the realization of a market opportunity by making a product available for purchase. The products developed by an commercial organisation provide the means to generate income.
In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models can include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.
In business administration, absorptive capacity is defined as a firm's ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends. It is studied on individual, group, firm, and national levels. Antecedents are prior-based knowledge and communication. Studies involve a firm's innovation performance, aspiration level, and organizational learning. It has been said that in order to be innovative an organization should develop its absorptive capacity.
A technology roadmap is a flexible planning schedule to support strategic and long-range planning, by matching short-term and long-term goals with specific technology solutions. It is a plan that applies to a new product or process and may include using technology forecasting or technology scouting to identify suitable emerging technologies. It is a known technique to help manage the fuzzy front-end of innovation. It is also expected that roadmapping techniques may help companies to survive in turbulent environments and help them to plan in a more holistic way to include non-financial goals and drive towards a more sustainable development. Here roadmaps can be combined with other corporate foresight methods to facilitate systemic change.
Open innovation is a term used to promote an Information Age mindset toward innovation that runs counter to the secrecy and silo mentality of traditional corporate research labs. The benefits and driving forces behind increased openness have been noted and discussed as far back as the 1960s, especially as it pertains to interfirm cooperation in R&D. Use of the term 'open innovation' in reference to the increasing embrace of external cooperation in a complex world has been promoted in particular by Henry Chesbrough, adjunct professor and faculty director of the Center for Open Innovation of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, and Maire Tecnimont Chair of Open Innovation at Luiss.
Eco-innovation is the development of products and processes that contribute to sustainable development, applying the commercial application of knowledge to elicit direct or indirect ecological improvements. This includes a range of related ideas, from environmentally friendly technological advances to socially acceptable innovative paths towards sustainability. The field of research that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new "ecological" ideas and technology spread is called eco-innovation diffusion.
The technology life cycle (TLC) describes the commercial gain of a product through the expense of research and development phase, and the financial return during its "vital life". Some technologies, such as steel, paper or cement manufacturing, have a long lifespan while in other cases, such as electronic or pharmaceutical products, the lifespan may be quite short.
Service innovation is used to refer to many things. These include but not limited to:
New business development concerns all the activities involved in the creation of a new enterprise and in realizing new business opportunities, including product or service design, business model design, and marketing.
Innovation management is a combination of the management of innovation processes, and change management. It refers to product, business process, marketing and organizational innovation. Innovation management is the subject of ISO 56000 series standards being developed by ISO TC 279.
Knowledge-based configuration, also referred to as product configuration or product customization, is an activity of customising a product to meet the needs of a particular customer. The product in question may consist of mechanical parts, services, and software. Knowledge-based configuration is a major application area for artificial intelligence (AI), and it is based on modelling of the configurations in a manner that allows the utilisation of AI techniques for searching for a valid configuration to meet the needs of a particular customer.
Organizational ambidexterity refers to an organization's ability to be efficient in its management of today's business and also adaptable for coping with tomorrow's changing demand. Just as being ambidextrous means being able to use both the left and right hand equally, organizational ambidexterity requires the organizations to use both exploration and exploitation techniques to be successful.
Demand articulation is a concept developed within the scientific field of innovation studies which serves to explain learning processes about needs for new and emerging technologies. Emerging technologies are technologies in their early phase of development, which have not resulted in concrete products yet. Many characteristics of these technologies, such as the technological aspects but also the needs of users concerning the technology, have not been specified yet. Demand articulation can be defined as ‘iterative, inherently creative processes in which stakeholders try to address what they perceive as important characteristics of and attempt to unravel preferences for an emerging innovation’.
Lead market is a term used in innovation theory and denotes a country or region which pioneers the successful adoption of an innovative design. It sends signalling effects to other "lag" markets, which in turn helps in triggering a process of global diffusion. Marian Beise, one of the foremost propounders of this theory as it has been understood so far, states: "Innovations that have been successful with local users in lead markets have a higher potential of becoming adopted world-wide than any other design preferred in other countries". Christoph Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal have described lead markets as "[…] markets that provide the stimuli for most global products and processes of a multinational company. Local innovations in such markets become useful elsewhere as the environmental characteristics that stimulated such innovations diffuse to other locations". To illustrate a lead market with some examples, Germany can be seen as a lead market for renewable energies and (premium) automobiles, while the United States would suit as a lead market for information technologies including e-commerce.
Thorsten Teichert is a German economist and Professor of Business Administration, especially marketing and innovation at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Hamburg.
Klaus Brockhoff is a German economist, organizational theorist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Kiel.
Advanced Innovation Design Approach (AIDA) is a holistic approach for enhancing the innovative and competitive capabilities of industrial companies. The name Advanced Innovation Design Approach (AIDA) was proposed in the research project "Innovation Process 4.0" run at the University of Applied Sciences Offenburg, Germany in co-operation with 10 German industrial companies in 2015–2019. AIDA can be considered as a pioneering mindset, an individually adaptable range of strong innovation techniques such as comprehensive front-end innovation process, advanced innovation methods, best tools and methods of the theory of inventive problem solving TRIZ, organisational measures for accelerating innovation, IT-solutions for Computer-Aided Innovation, and other tools for new product development, elaborated in the recent decade in the industry and academia.