September 01, 2009
It is a commonplace that innovation requires risk taking and that risk taking leads to failure. New product failure rates of 50 percent are not uncommon. Increasingly, corporations seek to formally...
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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, 2007
“Tom Evers,” XYZ’s R&D vp, had called a special staff meeting to discuss an urgent request from the company’s overseas subsidiary in “Freedonia.” He explained that the subsidiary needed to...
January 01, 2006
Each business has its own distinctive accounting profile, but if we don’t know the profile of our business, we cannot really know our business. Unfortunately, the accounting methods we use today were...
March 01, 2006
“Eliminating defects” is difficult in R&D because the work defies systematic improvement. In the workshops of the Industrial Research Institute’s Six Sigma in R&D Project, dozens of...
May 01, 2006
Given the exploding information on nanoscience, how are managers seeking and finding this knowledge? Predominately through the operation of social networks is the conclusion of an ongoing...
July 01, 2006
The richly endowed and much admired Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland (HHMI) is putting final touches on an “alternative research laboratory” at an idyllic site along the...
November 01, 2006
The top 100 U.S. investors in industrial research increased their total R&D investment again in 2005 but, for the first time in three years, at a decreasing rate. Likewise, total sales and total...
July 01, 2005
“Accelerated radical innovation just doesn’t happen,” Mark Papermaster, vice president for microprocessor technology development at IBM, told a workshop at The University of Toledo in March. In...
January 20, 2017
Vernor Vinge is a science fiction writer whose work includes A Fire Upon the Deep, Rainbows End , and “Fast Times at Fairmont High,” among others. He is also the author, in 1993, of “The Coming...
June 29, 2017
“Tom Evers,” XYZ’s R&D vice president, faced a difficult decision that he needed to make quickly. A serious automobile accident had placed “Bob Bateman,” director of electronics research, on...
July 01, 2017
Design for service is critical to making the focus on service work at Rolls-Royce. This article describes the company’s Advanced Services Transformation Roadmap, which ensures that services are...
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...
September 01, 1983
Over the years, we have found that research managers list "motivation" as the most perplexing requirement of the managerial role. This observation is true in many management situations. Motivation is...
July 01, 2018
“I think that concludes the agenda for our strategic initiatives,” the CEO said, wrapping up the strategy meeting. “Are there any new items before we adjourn?” “Sir, I would like to offer some...
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...
March 13, 2019
The cycle has already begun and by the time you read this, it will be well under way. The Global Innovation Index led the way with the November release of its 2018 report, which, as David Branigan...