Getting Value from Research
Abstract
During the past decade the environment for and execution of industrial research has changed profoundly, as recently documented in Robert Buderi, Engines of Tomorrow (Simon and Shuster, New York, 2000). The vertically integrated single-firm research-through-product value chains of the twentieth century are gone, replaced by value chains the various elements of which can come from different firms in different parts of the world as described, e.g., by Henry W. Cheesbrough, Open Innovation (Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2003). The consequences of this change are profound for national R policy, the R strategies of specific firms, and individual researchers. (See e.g., C. B. Duke, How to get value from R, Physics World, 17 (August 1997), 17.) In this presentation I sketch the strategies that firms employ to generate value from their research. Then I discuss the ingredients that are required to implement these strategies by creating value chains to deliver the fruits of research to customers. I indicate how the role of physical sciences is changing as unique hardware, based on advanced research in the physical sciences, becomes an increasingly minor (and often outsourced) component of integrated systems offerings. I close by noting implications of these developments on the nature of the careers that physicists can expect in industry and on the skills and cultural attributes that are required to be successful in the new industrial research environment.
- Publication:
-
APS March Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- March 2004
- Bibcode:
- 2004APS..MAR.U4004D