Business Strategy, R&D Management and Environmental Imperatives

Abstract
Environmental imperatives are seen by many business leaders to represent a major issue for the 1990's and beyond. The debate about the environmental sustainability of economic activity has important implications for the development of business and places considerable emphasis on the need for planned corporate change. The strategic significance of the environment is particularly critical to R&D as this is characterised by long planning horizons and provides the setting for the development of future products and processes.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the connections between environmental imperatives, strategic change and R&D management. To this end the paper reviews the strategic nature of environmental pressures on business. From this base, consideration is given to the responses required by business, in meeting these pressures. The paper concludes by suggesting that the application of management techniques in concert with organisational change is needed for R&D management to build environmental considerations effectively into innovation. These suggestions can be used to gauge how far individual businesses have developed the systems and structures to enable them to move towards sustainability. The implication of the paper is that R&D management will not only need to apply new management techniques but will have to play a leading role in innovative organisational structures in order to fulfil the full potential of environmentally sensitive products and processes.     

A Role for Knowledge Engineering in R&D

The author distinguishes information from knowledge: information is notes, details, evidence, etc., knowledge is general laws, theories, understanding. Information Engineering (IE) is the provision of knowledge in usable form. Artificial Intelligence (Al) is the construction of computer systems that exhibit signs of intelligence. He asserts that Al has already provided methodologies that have advanced both IE and KE. The result is that IE and KE are now in the position to act as the pencil, paper and report material for R&D.
Working knowledge of the languages is easily acquired and some useful empty shells are available, though the latter need more variety. Existing systems tend to be crude and may not address the right issues, e.g. emphasising probability rather than the risks associated with actions. Nevertheless the available tools are good enough to build useful expert systems for R&D.
The potential of KE in education is being missed. In the author's opinion all university students should be taught to use the basic tools of knowledge engineering and apply them to their own disciplines.     

Changing Patterns in Industrial R&D Management

A successful R&D manager is, in many ways, an agent of change. R&D managers must respond effectively to changes in domestic and global competition, product and process technologies, customer requirements, regulatory matters, and senior management's perception of the role R&D plays in a firm. The responses to these changes flow downstream from R&D to other parts of the organization, in the form of new materials, methods, processes, and products. To help us understand the changes facing R&D management, Ashok K. Gupta and David Wilemon present the results of a study that examines the ideas and experiences of 120 R&D directors from technology-based companies. The study explores the major changes that R&D management has undergone in recent years, the changes R&D managers expect to encounter during the next few years, and the causes of those changes. The respondents also identify the skills and knowledge they view as necessary for effective R&D management, and they assess their organizations' capabilities in those areas. According to the respondents, major changes that R&D has encountered include increased emphasis on such issues as cross-functional teamwork, R&D's contribution to both short- and long-term business results, R&D's capability to quickly bring to market new products that customers value, efficient use of R&D resources, and R&D alliances. Other changes noted by respondents include greater pressure to find new markets, increased attention on the effective management of technical personnel, and increased regulations and sensitivity to environmental issues. The knowledge domains that the respondents highlighted as having the greatest effect on R&D performance include such capabilities as understanding customer needs, monitoring market developments, commercializing new technologies, building cross-functional teams, managing multiple R&D projects, and accelerating new product development. According to the respondents, the largest gaps between required and current capabilities exist in several of the areas listed as being most important to effective R&D management, including monitoring market developments that can affect R&D activities and overall business performance, maintaining a spirit of inquiry while ensuring that R&D contributes to overall corporate performance, developing technology commercialization capabilities, fostering mutually profitable strategic alliances, and accelerating the development and commercialization of new products.     

Management of European fast reactor R&D

Since 1984 government-funded fast reactor R&D in France, Germany and the UK has been run as a collaborative activity, and since 1988 as a unified programme in support of the design and construction of the advanced European Fast Reactor. This paper describes the international management structure which has been set up, and the means used to control the work. It is written from the point of view of those engaged in the project, and makes no attempt at a formal analysis of the structure.
The main difficulty is that control of funding remains with the three governments. The R&D programme has to be managed so that it meets the needs of each government separately as well as the designers' requirements.
To start with the management structure was excessively bureaucratic, but it has become more flexible and efficient. This has happened as the initial nationalistic suspicions have broken down, and the staff engaged in the work have learnt more about each others' ways of working so that an atmosphere of trust and inter-dependence has grown up.
(This paper was written before the changes in UK policy on fast reactor development were announced in November 1992.)     

Hazard and Operability Studies and their initial applications in R&D

Increasing technological complexity together with contemporary social and legal pressures have made it necessary to develop more effective approaches to safety. The need is particularly strong in the design and operation of chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. An approach has been developed by one company operating in these fields and applied to its production facilities for a number of years. This paper describes the approach together with the recent extension of the method into the R & D area.     

How a patent conflict affects industrial R&D Management

The authors relate and analyse the case of a long-running patent conflict between two very large multinational firms in the synthetic fibre business - AKZO and Du Pont. The subject of the conflict was a new fibre of the aramid dass. They show that the case reveals deficiencies in international patent law in need of correction.
The analysis is conducted with the aid of social network theory applied to pub-lished information and data supplied by AKZO and other sources. The theory takes as its starting point that when a number of related functional groups unite behind a common and vital interest the pursuit of this interest becomes virtually unstoppable. In this case the crucial social network was formed first within AKZO and then extended outside to include politicians and government. It propelled the firm to pursue to the end attempts to by-pass a patent position held by Du Pont.
The paper reveals that an apparently strong patent position can actually help a rival to circumvent it. This defect in the patent law is leading companies to avoid patenting and to rely instead on secrecy alone. The authors believe that this will act against the public interest, for exam-ple, by preventing thorough public assessment of a new technology before it is implemented. They argue for changes in the patent law to reduce this risk.     

Changes in the field of R&D management over the past 20 years

Abstract
The purpose of this bibliographic study is to identify trends of interest in the field of the management of technology in the last 20 years. The data used are based mainly on a classification of the topics covered by papers printed in this journal since its first publication in 1970.
On the whole, interest in most of the topics has remained steady, notably in economics of R&D, communication, innovation and creativity. The only notable decrease in interest has been in project evaluation and selection. Relative to their importance, the authors remark that in some areas in which interest has remained steady, such as creativity and innovation, not enough is being done. Areas in which interest has increased include organizational issues, the interface between R&D and production and the impact of information technology. Interest in technology strategy increased over the early part of the review period but has recently declined.
The authors conclude by listing topics which strongly deserve attention by workers in the field. They cite integration of R&D into corporate strategy, organizing for technological flexibility, technology assessment and transfer, speeding up the R&D process, measuring the impact of new information technology, intrapreneurship and defining the role of basic R&D in technology development.     

Using IT Effectively in R&D Management23—25 September 1996, IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland

The commercialization of biotechnology requires very serious and intense research capabilities. The pharmaceutical industry has been one of the early exploiters of biotechnology because of the existence of such capabilities. This feature has been observed worldover and the literature is replete with information on how firms have evolved various strategies to meet this requirement. The present paper is an attempt to assess the R&D capabilities in the pharmaceutical companies in India in the context of biotechnology commercialization. A study was made of the R&D capabilities of 33 companies. These companies represent 3 categories of the Indian industry: purely medicinal chemistry based pharmaceuticals; diversified (both medicinal chemistry and biotechnology); dedicated biotechnology companies. Discriminant analysis was performed (i) to understand the distinctiveness of the three groups of companies and (ii) to understand the characteristics of their R&D capabilities. With respect to eight of the ten chosen parameters like R&D intensity, skill intensity, linkages, output of R&D, size, age, R&D manpower as a proportion of total manpower and number of skilled R&D employees, the three groups are observed to be distinct from each other.