you’ve defined most R&D very well at large chemical companies.
Another point of note and could be a discussion. Business development “aka” technical sales in the industry is dominated by former engineers. I believe this is because they can see trends and troubleshoot customer challenges.
Very rarely are sales “dialing for dollars” in this industry now
"Perhaps companies that are wholly composed of doing business in “bits” will get displaced by new entrants while those who have a footprint in the “atoms” will be harder to replace. It’s why I think we will still be using iPhones in twenty years, but perhaps Facebook will become synonymous with Geocities in the same time frame."
This basically describes my big-industrial-research-centre experience (about 10 years) quite well.
Some truly ground-breaking stuff and new idea generation (definitely not the majority of my time), lots of cost-down and product substitution work (probably the majority of my time), minor tweaks, keeping up with (or at least keeping track of) the Joneses, etc. The R&D was there as a technical service, but also to be sure that "if our business is going to be disrupted, we want to be the ones to be doing that disrupting" (basically these words uttered by the company's Chief Innovation Officer).
The R&D was also important in securing business in an indirect way -- bringing big potential customers through the research labs to show all the cool equipment (= "we are innovative") and also that there is an R&D presence here vs. importing the technology from other countries. I led lots of tours where these were the central messages and they did seem to help sell product / services (or so I was told).
you’ve defined most R&D very well at large chemical companies.
Another point of note and could be a discussion. Business development “aka” technical sales in the industry is dominated by former engineers. I believe this is because they can see trends and troubleshoot customer challenges.
Very rarely are sales “dialing for dollars” in this industry now
"Perhaps companies that are wholly composed of doing business in “bits” will get displaced by new entrants while those who have a footprint in the “atoms” will be harder to replace. It’s why I think we will still be using iPhones in twenty years, but perhaps Facebook will become synonymous with Geocities in the same time frame."
Couldn't agree more.
This basically describes my big-industrial-research-centre experience (about 10 years) quite well.
Some truly ground-breaking stuff and new idea generation (definitely not the majority of my time), lots of cost-down and product substitution work (probably the majority of my time), minor tweaks, keeping up with (or at least keeping track of) the Joneses, etc. The R&D was there as a technical service, but also to be sure that "if our business is going to be disrupted, we want to be the ones to be doing that disrupting" (basically these words uttered by the company's Chief Innovation Officer).
The R&D was also important in securing business in an indirect way -- bringing big potential customers through the research labs to show all the cool equipment (= "we are innovative") and also that there is an R&D presence here vs. importing the technology from other countries. I led lots of tours where these were the central messages and they did seem to help sell product / services (or so I was told).