Research Technology Management

U.S. R&Amp;D Spending Continues Growing

Once again, Schonfeld Associates is forecasting growth in R&D spending by US firms in many industries in the coming calendar year. The 32nd and latest edition of the Libertyville, Illinois consulting firm's annual R&D Ratios & Budgets expects the pharmaceutical industry to again be the biggest R&D investor, with the drug companies increasing their 2009 budgets by 9.9% to $105 billion. The biggest single R&D investor in 2009 will be Nokia at $10.79 billion, followed closely...

R&Amp;D and Business Strategy

The Enterprise of the Future

Last May, IBM unveiled results from its 2008 Global CEO survey where they asked more than 1,000 CEOs around the world how their organizations were addressing new and changing customers, global integration, and business model innovation. Today, a CIO has power unimaginable only 10 years ago. In the past, success was based on technical expertise. But today, CIOs don't just keep the organization running, they are also a catalyst of change -- and in charge of moving their organizations forward. T...

Singapore to Open Fusionopolis

In October, Singapore will celebrate the opening of the second major R&D hub that this Southeast Asian country has built this decade. The new, futuristic hub called Fusionopolis will feature research in the physical sciences and engineering to tackle global science and technology challenges. The 75-acre complex will be adjacent to Biopolis, which opened five years ago and is today cited by many other nations as a model -- and international competitor -- in the biomedical sciences. The for...

Europe Rival to Mit Advances

After years of intensive political debate on policy and funding, Europe is now moving ahead with its plans to create a rival to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It's been a long, bumpy path, with the outcome not at all certain. In June, heads of state from the 27-member European Union chose Budapest for the headquarters of its new European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), along with a governing board of 18 eminent figures largely from the science, academic and business ...

Innovation Networks and Knowledge Clusters: Findings and Insights From the Us, Eu and Japan

Arise-Advancing Research in Science and Engineering

Special Issue: Dual Organisational Capabilities: The Next Challenge for Continuous Innovation

The author reviewed the Special Issue: Dual Organizational Capabilities: The Next Challenge for Continuous Innovation, edited by Mats Magnusson and Antonella Martini. The 10 papers in the issue, following the introduction, originated at the 7th International CINet conference in Italy in 2006. The first four papers following the editors' introduction focus on the development of CI capacity, the next two address learning and unlearning, and the remaining papers deal with specific issues of huma...

New Directions in R&Amp;D: Current and Prospective Challenges

Special Issue: Continental-Scale Ecology in an Increasingly Connected World

The author reviewed the the article Special Issue: Continental-scale ecology, in an increasingly connected world. Ecologists discuss how human influences interact with natural processes to influence global connectivity in this US National Science Foundation publication special issue. The authors conclude that networks of large-scale experiments are needed to predict long-term ecological change. Understanding ecosystem connectivity across a range of scales -- from local to regional to continen...

The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution

Hp Labs' Latest Experiment: Itself

How Google Fuels Its Idea Factory

Perspectives

France's Competition Clusters Seek to Boost Industry Innovation

In today's France it is waywardness in entrepreneurship and the frustrating lack of investment capital that have limited world-class innovation. Beginning early in the 21st century, when the fashions of marketing and total quality analysis had taken hold among designers, engineers and production controllers, the new buzz words became knowledge society and economic intelligence. The nationwide network designed for excellence in management as well as innovative approaches is also France's speci...

Managers At Work

Building University Relationships in China

Chinese universities are closely tied to the government. If a firm has long established relationships with key managers in the government, they can act as a sponsor for the university initiative. It's easy to underestimate the importance of university/government relationships. As more Chinese firms invent, they need the protections afforded by strong intellectual property law in order to maintain profitability in the global marketplace. While this legal evolution has already occurred in Weste...

Information Resources

Grabbing Lightning-Building a Capability for Breakthrough Innovation

Grabbing Lightning -- Building a Capability for Breakthrough Innovation, by Gina C O'Connor, Richard Leifer, Albert S Paulson, and Lois S Peters, is reviewed.

One Point Of View

United States Economic and Technology Policy

Technological innovation has driven impressive job creation and economic growth, and with it has come increased productivity, low inflation and an unprecedented economic expansion. Innovation and growth, supported by increasing government and industry investment in R&D, have helped to sustain the US as the most competitive nation in the world for many years. While the private sector has primary responsibility for implementing technological innovation, the economic climate created by gover...

Keeping U.S. Industry Competitive in the Global Economy

Innovation and new technologies are universally understood to be critical to continued US competitiveness in the global marketplace. Quantitative data on R&D inputs and outputs paint an ambiguous picture of trends in US global competitiveness in science and technology. R&D funding trends show that since 1980 industry support for R&D in this country has exceeded federal support: from near equality in about 1980, today about two-thirds of US. Although a range of measures of the comp...

Innovation For Innovators

Where Do They Find the Time?

Until a few years ago, the Internet and the Web were places where established organizations created and published content for the rest of the world to consume, digest and use in some way. Ten years later there were millions of personally published web sites. The web is supplanting the television as a source of entertainment and information in the same way that the television supplanted radio and newspapers in a previous generation. In the end, all of these will continue to exist, but the bala...

R&D/Business Strategy

Mobilizing an R&Amp;D Organization Through Strategy Cascading

Cascading business strategy down into an R&D organization is widely used to drive strategy into the organization and align researchers and developers behind the organization's strategy. However, the key benefit from cascading lies not in top-down control, but in clarity for the technical personnel about what they can contribute, in the motivation that stems from being able to voice their views and concerns, and in the dialogue between senior management and the R&D organization. Dialog...

Atlas of Technological Advance

Technology executives are increasingly being called upon to find innovation opportunities along the technological frontier. To do this properly, they need a special kind of technological knowledge-they need broad technological edification and sophistication, including a panoramic grasp of the entire technological landscape and its major evolutionary trends. To help executives achieve this understanding an Atlas of Technological Advance is being created that will chart the global technological...

Aligning an R&Amp;D Portfolio with Corporate Strategy

R&D faces challenges when serving multiple businesses and markets, each with its own strategies within an overall corporate strategy. To perform in this environment, Genencor has created an interactive, cross-functional engagement within the corporation that involves R&D, manufacturing, supply, and other supporting functions. Business integration teams (BITs) have been introduced to create the necessary cross-functional linkages. A process for setting and managing portfolio priorities...

Strategies for Driving R&Amp;D and Technology Development

It is often claimed that research and development has its own, separate strategy. However, there are several strategies related to research, as well as to product and technology development, that address general business and competition, products and platforms, and technologies and competencies. None of these is sufficient on its own because the strategies influence one another. Business and technology roadmaps are essential in linking these company-wide strategic plans-by integrating and exp...

Managing the Opportunity Portfolio

Portfolio planning involves five basic tasks: identifying current as well as future gaps in the portfolio relative to the firm's overall business strategy, striking a balance between strengthening the firm's current strategic position and the exploration of new markets or technologies, creating a portfolio with the highest potential financial value, and exploring the extent to which the competition can be redefined. Tools for accomplishing these tasks include the "traffic light" approach, ana...

Harnessing Competencies, Capabilities and Resources

The importance of identifying and fostering corporate "capabilities" has been confused with creating competencies. Competencies are unique products or services, often created in the R&D labs, which can penetrate existing markets. Capabilities are the operational ability to deliver those new products and services efficiently, repeatedly and in sufficient volume. Capabilities and competencies are both required to successfully place a product in the market. These must also be supported by co...