January 01, 2008
Managers in R&D need to take a more active role in helping their corporations to find new market applications and develop business plans for realizing value from those applications. Often it is...
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IRI resources assist your day-to-day R&D functions and help in problem solving. Search by keyword, topic, or your R&D role to find tools to help you manage your organization's R&D and innovation process more effectively.
January 01, 2008
Manufacturing firms whose project teams acquire departmental intelligence—the ability to understand and take others’ departmental perspectives—are more successful at product improvement. This is the...
March 01, 2008
The knowledge management process is increasingly seen as a key to organizational creativity and innovation. The evolving global business environment necessitates that organizations shift from a rigid...
August 30, 2016
According to research conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute in 2011, big data "will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of growth, innovation, and consumer surplus" in the...
September 01, 2006
Life scientists are frustrated by aspects of their organizations that they feel make it harder to accomplish the goals for which they were trained and hired. They report unclear goals, communication...
September 01, 2006
As the reality of higher energy and raw materials prices settles in, we in R&D are challenged to find solutions. A recent book on the wealth creation driven by innovation and an article in HBS...
November 01, 2006
A number of authors have seen the value of inserting “aliens” into the innovation process, writes Harvard Business School professor emerita Dorothy Leonard in her introduction to Cynthia Rabe’s book...
May 01, 2005
First, consider that over a 50-year period (and your author has been working for that time), U.S. R&D expenditures have increased from $5 billion per year to just over $300 billion. At the same...
May 03, 2017
My grandfather repaired watches. When he died, he left his tools, watches, and parts to my father. At an early age, I wanted to understand how watches worked. I would tear them apart and put them...
September 01, 2005
The celebration of America’s 229th Independence Day is an excellent time to reflect on what this freedom has meant to America in terms of science and innovation. The United States has clearly enjoyed...
September 01, 2005
The word sustainability has many meanings, most often connoting a reactive response to an environmental problem. The three articles that follow first provide definitions for sustainability that...
July 10, 2017
FM Global is a unique insurance company. It’s an engineering-based insurer. Our business model is based on reducing our clients’ property risk and potential for business interruption through...
November 01, 2017
My dad is a self-taught engineer. He worked on whatever was broken in our household. We seemed to always have one car or another in the process of being worked on; I was the guy grabbing the wrenches...
November 01, 2018
In my heart, I always knew that I would go into public service, that I needed to do something that was mission driven. I studied foreign service in college; after I graduated I taught English in the...
January 01, 2019
The late Dean Smith, legendary head coach of the University of North Carolina basketball team, noted a common phenomenon among freshmen who were recruited into his basketball program. As star...
July 01, 2019
The Business Model Canvas has become an integral part of the practice of Lean Startup and also a tool for established companies seeking to strengthen their business models against disruption. In this...