The place of R&D in industrial organizations according to theoretical models
First generation: Technical Push
In the development of new first-generation products, R&D intervenes upstream of a sequential development chain: it conducts applied research work, which then gives rise to design and engineering work, then in turn products, in the market through marketing and sales actions. This is the traditional Technical Push scheme (more or less explicit in the promotion of fundamental research work).
Second Generation: Market Pull
Some works date back to around the 1960s the emergence of the second generation product development plan, known as “Market-Pull”, no longer starting from research work to be industrialized and commercialized, but on the contrary from a perception and analysis of needs and expectations of the market and consumers to determine new product developments. Development, manufacturing and marketing actions follow.
Third generation: coupled model of innovation
The 1970s saw the development of 3rd generation new product development models, based on innovation approaches combining the generation of ideas internally and the exploration of knowledge outside the organization.
Interactivity is central to these models, both internally, with back and forth between services, and externally, to gather information, identify needs, opportunities and/or options, technological or other, useful for the organization. .
Fourth generation: “parallelized” model
Certain works have been able to identify, from the 1990s in the automobile industry, approaches to developing new 4th generation products, in which the different departments act “in parallel”, with regular meeting points and adjustment of actions to progress. various.
Subsequent “generations” of new product development models could be identified, generally combining certain specificities of the main models. Models from IT in particular (Agile, Lean Start-up, etc.) are sometimes transposed into certain start-up developments.
In general, the presentation of these models in “generation” should not mislead: if certain models seem to have developed and then generalized at certain periods, they have not necessarily eclipsed the previous ones.
Roles of Industrial R&D in process industries
However meritorious such a genealogy of organizational models for the development of new products may be, it nevertheless struggles to account for the concrete variety of their implementation.
Depending on the degree of innovation of the activities concerned, the nature of the products targeted, the size of the organizations or their internal resources and skills, certain models may be preferred to others. Some models may be applied for some products and not others. Some models also persist for reasons of organizational inertia.
On the other hand, these models mask the fact that under the same name, a service can take charge of actions on perimeters and with completely variable degrees of consideration of the environment. It seems interesting to us to focus here on the proper role of industrial R&D, whose functions are likely not to be limited to traditional R, D and possibly I (for innovation) but also more broadly in support of other functions of the 'organization.
R&D as Experimental Development (D) Service
In processing industries, the technical heart of the development of a new product most often consists of formulate, ie experimenting and designing a recipe for composition and preparation, a product with the intended properties of use. This formulation work is done in the available laboratory environment -sometimes outsourced.
For all of the models mentioned above, the prevalent role of R&D is centered on the “experimental” development of products with an established marketing brief. In practice however, depending on the organizations and the scale of the innovation approaches (sometimes with R&I or R&D&I type services), R&D is likely to take charge of approaches associated with the study of the state of the art or quasi-fundamental research.
The industrialization of the manufacturing of the project is generally ensured by a dedicated department, which works on adjusting the industrial manufacturing conditions of the project formulated in R&D on the pilot (or sometimes production) facilities. It should be noted, however, that some organizations include in-house R&D actions industrialization studies on pilots sometimes going as far as the industrial scale.
R&D as an interactive link in the technical sequence
In certain product development dynamics, close to the logic of the third generation innovation model, R&D may also be required to play an active role in interactions with industrialization, production or even customer application. for B2B activities.
R&D is likely to play two types of role that are often correlated:
- provide advice to support decision-making in industrialization or production
- Provide support in solving problems faced with the usual empirical approaches struggle
These roles require R&D teams to have knowledge, expertise and techniques beyond those required for strict formulation. The complex interactions between materials and conditions of implementation, process or application, are often poorly controlled on a scientific level, forcing most to resort to empirical approaches and a certain conservatism of practices.
A common way for R&D to provide support downstream in the chain is to integrate pilot equipment into its own installations. Less common to our knowledge, the development of predictive methods, semi-empirical or simulation models and other techniques are levers with great potential for strengthening R&D capabilities.
R&D as a technical-scientific support center
In addition to the Research “R” or Innovation “I” functions, the R&D department is likely to play a broader support center role for the various departments of the organization related to technical issues:
- The marketing brief can for example be greatly refined by a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the Customer experience
- Quality, like the analytical laboratory, can benefit from having non-normative methods but adapted to the specificities of the products and processes and their positioning
- New works can benefit from having reliable data to challenge suppliers and avoid unnecessary oversizing
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Thus, industrial R&D is likely to ensure support missions vis-à-vis the other departments of the organization - exploring, quantifying, evaluating, assisting in decision-making, etc. - in the service of objectives centered on a particular technical development (reformulating a product, solving certain recurring technical problems in the long term, …) or more strategic (gaining competitiveness, reducing energy consumption,…).
On these questions, R&D seems to be the ideal place both to explore options and also to capitalize on advanced and specific technical knowledge for the entire organization. Obviously, it is a matter of finding ways to avoid the evaporation of this knowledge and know-how in the air currents of turnover or retirements.
Last Updated on February 16, 2023 by Vincent Billot