Organizations Are Trying to Improve Their Research and Development Efforts, but How Can R&D...

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c27091) has announced the addition of R&D Productivity: Understanding the Drivers and Enablers to their offering.

Faced with the reality of increasingly scarce resources and pressure from senior management,

research and development (R&D) organizations are trying to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. But how do you measure R&D productivity? And what are the most appropriate measures to use? Find out in latest Best-practice Report Research and Development Productivity: Understanding the Drivers and Enablers.

The approaches taken by these best-practice organizations provide many insights into how they are measuring R&D productivity for maximum organizational value. Key findings in this report detail how to:

--create policies and practices to increase R&D productivity,

--implement change management activities to support improved R&D efficiency, and

--use measures to monitor R&D productivity

Topics Covered

Sponsor and Partner Organizations

A listing of the sponsor organizations in this study, as well as the best-practice ("partner") organizations that were benchmarked for their research and development activities.

Executive Summary

A bird's-eye view of the study, presenting the study focus, the methodology used throughout the course of the study, key findings, and a profile of the participants. The findings are explored in detail in the following sections.

Study Findings

An in-depth look at the findings of this study. The findings are supported by quantitative data and qualitative examples of practices employed by the partner organizations.

Partner Organization Case Studies

Background information on the partner organizations, as well as their innovative research and development practices.

Index

Summary

Corporations cannot sustain success for any length of time without new products or services to sell. Therefore, capable research and development (R&D) is essential to corporate viability. R&D is among the few areas in companies where investments are made for the purpose of producing high multiples of revenues and profits. In most other functions, investments typically are made to achieve cost reductions of a much lesser nature.

Over the past three decades, from approximately 1970 to 2000, businesses have focused on improving the functions that are downstream from R&D (e.g., anufacturing, logistics, and distribution) and that support these line management capabilities. Administrative staffs are now highly automated and have minimal personnel, and R&D's downstream functions are now generally lean. In the 1970s industry improvements focused on logistics and distribution, while in the 1980s they focused on manufacturing, inventory, and operations streamlining. Improvement in operations continued well into the 1990s, and outsourcing may be considered the final frontier of operations improvement.

One could argue that, until the early 1990s, little focus was brought to bear on R&D, marketing, and sales organization productivity. Although there are always ongoing efforts, they were never the focus of corporate attention. In the early 1990s, because most other functions were well on their way to being effective and efficient, industry began to focus on R&D activities. During the 1990s much time was spent on improving the productivity of lower-level R&D activities. For example, computer aided design, engineering, and manufacturing tools became commonplace among designers, while simulation, laboratory analysis, and mathematical modeling tools became commonplace among scientists. At the same time that automation was occurring at the lower levels of R&D, new product or service projects became a focus of improvement. The degree of predictability of all project variables was so poor that confident business decisions were not possible. Today, products generally are consistently measured well across companies, but benchmarking in both these areas is not widespread.

By 2004 most lower-level R&D activities were also on their way to some degree of effectiveness and efficiency, and the remaining opportunities lay at the top of the R&D organization and in the earlier phases of research and advanced development. It is notable that these remaining opportunity areas, along with improvements in marketing and sales, are the most difficult business activities to define and improve. Much of the past 30 years has been devoted to improving transaction-based functions with short cycle times and errors that are clearly observed. The technical nature of R&D excludes the ability of a large percentage of company employees to assist in improvement efforts, which further increases both the challenge of and accountability for getting better.

In short, the easiest improvements in organizations have already been completed or largely accomplished, and the hardest improvements remain: R&D, marketing, and sales. This study is focused on the opportunities for R&D, which must produce ever-higher multiples of sales and profits for a given investment level. R&D improvement will not be measured in cost reductions but rather in revenue and profit improvement.

This study seeks to break new ground at the top of R&D organizations and in the earlier phases of R&D activities. No single study could encompass the range of what remains to improve in R&D. The topics for this specific study were selected as they are "the next frontier of focus" in the journey of R&D improvement. Lower level functions, groups, and projects are now largely automated and systematized-- equivalent to islands of automation that formerly existed in other business functions. The challenge now is to rise to the next level to understand how to tie all these islands together and achieve optimization at a higher organizational plane--the top of the corporation and R&D organization.

This strategic benchmarking study on R&D productivity is focused on three main areas that are related and intertwined. These three areas need to be addressed as a set by top management if performance improvement is to last for any length of time. If any one area is not addressed adequately, achievement of the other areas typically falls back. First, we sought to define some of the leading policies and practices that increase R&D productivity at the top of corporations and their R&D organizations. Second, we sought to identify the methods used to change business practices to achieve and/or reinforce these leading policies and practices. Finally, we sought to identify the measures that determine where improvement opportunities lie, monitor ongoing improvement efforts against goals, measure the R&D organization as a whole, and measure the success of individual project or product investments.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c27091