By the mid-1990s, as the focus turned to filling the gap in corporate new product and service pipelines, another metrics concept emerged on the scene. From an R&D perspective it came through the Environmental Health and Safety departments where the concept of a hierarchy of metrics evolved. This concept was derived from the [...]
Activity Metrics The “Activity Metrics” figure shows some of the activity-based metrics later developed by the same group, segmented by who was affected (consequence) and what was measured (an item internal or external to the R&D organization). This advance in measurements aided new stakeholders with quality or service interests. With these metrics they [...]
Consequence Metrics vs. Time Period of Measurement The “Consequence Metrics vs.Time Period of the Measurement“ figure shows consequence- based metrics segmented by timing. It was developed by a subcommittee of the IRI’s Research-on-Research committee in the early 1990s and provides a good set of measures for incremental R&D activities aimed primarily at a [...]
As R&D executives cope with tight financial resources and demands for increasing new revenues, the pressure to measure their organizations increases. Metrics allow R&D leaders to optimize R&D’s productivity and justify to the CFO and CEO their returns on continued funding. There are actually rich sources of appropriate R&D metrics for leaders to [...]
In a 2017 survey, the Innovation Research Interchange (formerly Industrial Research Institute) published a survey related to the use of external innovation sources. They found that most entities utilized standard R&D management practices and personnel in their projects. Contribution to Revenue They also found that the contribution from external innovation to the overall [...]
Internationally, licensing is the most important method by which to source external technology between different international entities. U.S. companies tend to use suppliers as the most important source of external technology. In contrast foreign countries typically rank suppliers further down the list. Thus although US companies may be listening to their suppliers more [...]
Differences in Best-Practices Daniel Collado-Ruiz and his team reported that more than two thirds of the top 100 corporations are engaging startups one way or another. The problem in this trend is that collaboration is often not successful. It often stays at a superficial level, and does not make a lasting impact in [...]
Realizing that observations OF customers are often a better source of discontinuous innovation than observations FROM customers, IBM was one of the first of now many software companies that utilize an online channel to provide downloadable beta version software to registered users for tracking usage and gathering feedback, both explicit and implicit. Such [...]
Supplier partnerships are in some ways most easy to initiate. This is because there is an ongoing relationship to be built upon. Difficulty when using this source of external innovation typically arises because the relationship ready has expected norms of behavior that oftentimes a new partnership relationship conflicts with. Value Chain Map Showing [...]
Seeking to increase exposure to external technology, and infuse a culture of innovation into their R&D staff, British Telecom, Becton Dickinson, in Eastman chemical are examples of companies which have co-located various types of external idea partners at R&D campus parks. The physical proximity of the research partners creates occasions for impromptu idea [...]