There is no universal nomenclature dictating what constitutes “research and development” though there are likely some elements of agreement regardless of the perspective of whomever you ask. Within the breadth of opinion on what R&D means, one often includes something more accurately called straight development. It is much rarer to see an group touted as R&D when it is actually doing what is more accurately pure “R” research.
Straight-ahead development is a very market-driven activity. Its constraints are purely commercially-driven. It is bounded by time-to-market, trade-offs of feature/capability based on customer needs, and somewhat interchangeable “resource-unit” allocations and associated costs.
When we talk of pure or basic research, we mean investigations that seek to clarify the basic understandings of a field, or a sub-field, of science. We explore observed phenomena with a structured approach (scientific-method) to uncover answers for which we have a suitably high-level (though not without uncertainty) of confidence. In this area we more accurately use the “R” on its own, rather than within the concept of “R&D.”
Research and development is about a sweet-spot between these two extremes.
Where an “R&D team” is embarking on exploratory work it is most often assumed that there will be an eventual application of the outputs in the market-exploitation sense. This is technology-transfer. The term R&D is typically only used in technical and science fields.
In the so-called “social sciences” there are different interpretations of the word “research.” Indeed, disciplines that include the word “science” in their description paradoxically are not doing science at all, and so it is not surprising that the nature of their word “research” is quite different as well. In that context it leans more towards surveys, literature-gathering, and information compilation.
Broadly in the liberal arts, history or literature for example, “research” is a process of exploring diverse written source materials, cross-referencing and collating existing publications and information. For the purposes of this blog we will consider those endeavours “tertiary” research activities – all valuable to the progress of their field, but outside the context of our interests here.
In industry and academia exploiting technology and the sciences, research is of a more fundamental nature, where discovering or explaining physical phenomena is our primary interest. Whether this is to add to the body of human knowledge or to create commercial opportunities varies. Sometimes the work is “secondary research” in that it involves combining of existing capabilities, however the goal even then is to create a capability or ecosystem that didn’t exist before. For example, research into networking and internet-based services fit well into this area. This still meets our concept of R&D – a structured pursuit of something new and commercially viable.
An inherent component of research is the concept of possible failure. Tertiary research that seeks to identify information and experiences of others known, or likely, to exist, may be merely termed “search.” Inherent also in the concept of “failure” in research is that it may often give us something just as valuable as success does. It closes potential avenues, narrowing the scope towards ultimate discovery.
So while we do not dismiss liberal-arts research as without value, it’s rather the challenge of balanced R&D activities, as defined, which are of key interest in this blog. Mainly because the culture, techniques, costs and management are of a profoundly different nature.
Categories
Sources can define R&D in a variety of categories and types. Original versus secondary, directed versus non-directed, quantitative versus qualitative, etc… My preference is for a simpler three-way categorization from OECD suggestions:
- Basic or “Pure”
- Applied
- Experimental Development
The first category may often be termed simply “research” as earlier discussed. For example, this is what we most often see in the university/academic context, although that has been changing with greater interactions between academia and industry. The latter two categories will be the main focus of these R&D discussions.
As we explore the subject in this blog, and the ways in which it can be more successful, much of what we discuss can have some applicability to pure research as well, though we sometimes diverge from relevance to that space. Thus I propose that we consider pure research a thing that is somewhat of an R&D super-set. It is a substantial activity with characteristics unto itself. Much of the management concepts discussed, such as criteria for selecting programs, measurement of success and analysis of outputs may apply to our colleagues concerned with pure research, but it may sometimes be a stretch to find analogous application.
In conclusion there’s a band of activity that defines true R&D. There is the uncertainty and breaking-of-new-ground like in pure research, but there are also applications and economic constraints similar to those in pure development. Let’s agree that our discussion on this blog will be oriented towards a balanced concept of R&D that exists in the middle. While we’ll be interested and often motivated by uncertainty and creativity in fundamental questions, we’re also interested in the rewards of how results contribute to commercial success.