May 01, 2011
The term “research and development†didn’t enter the vocabulary until the mid-twentieth century, although forward-thinking companies had been collaborating with gifted scientists for at least a...
Learning Center
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.
Knowledge Management
May 01, 2012
Thanks to Internet technology and social media, voluntary challenges and forums have become a widespread form of collaboration for business; examples include Wikipedia, Innocentive, and many internal...
January 01, 2012
Prior to the introduction of the tele-graph system, information moved from one place to another at the speed of a steam locomotive, a dashing pony ex-press, or a lumbering ocean liner. Letters,...
July 01, 2013
OVERVIEW: Online collaboration is a powerful tool for boosting idea generation in large corporations. However, management may experience an overload of proposals from employees. To improve front-end...
March 01, 2013
OVERVIEW: In the emerging service economy, many traditional product manufacturing companies are seeking innovative ways to do business, focusing on product-service combinations. Development of these...
January 01, 2013
The Cases of Novartis and ETH Zurich OVERVIEW: R&D units are often structured by product or by scientiï¬c discipline. In either case, organizational boundaries impede horizontal information...
March 01, 2014
OVERVIEW: This paper chronicles a managerial intervention in a major technology organization. Senior executives identiï¬ed that signiï¬cant expertise was distributed throughout a large number of...
May 01, 2015
OVERVIEW: Although the company had endured multiple transformations, Hewlett-Packard’s shift from instrumentation to computing was complicated by clashes between the rigid management style of a...
January 01, 2015
OVERVIEW: Drawing on a case study at Ubisoft, a major creative firm in the videogame industry, this article shows how a ï¬rm can nurture and engage with its knowing communities to fuel the front end...