R&D Management

By Brett Malone, Ph.D., President & CEO Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center Not every research project succeeds. And not every company survives. However, the ones that align with the culture of winning and sign up and adopt the community charter are opting in for a much higher chance of disrupting their industry and changing the…

by DePaul University Racial and ethnic diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) remains low, continuing to raise concerns for equity and inclusion of scholars from minoritized communities. But there are steps that can be taken now to help make research groups more equitable and inclusive, stressed the authors of a new paper published…

mHUB, an independent hardtech innovation and manufacturing center, today announced the launch of mHUB Accelerated Incubation, a six-month, hands-on startup accelerator focused on the product development and commercialization of early-stage, high-potential physical product startups. mHUB Accelerated Incubation will focus on startups building and growing demand-driven technologies in industries such as Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT),…

China and Asian R&D During the 2008-2009 financial crisis, China’s massive demand for goods and materials supported global economic growth, especially in areas like Brazil, Germany and Australia, which avoided recessions because of Chinese trade. That type of response for the COVID-19 pandemic is not likely this year. China’s economy was affected more in 2020…

European Union/U.K. R&D Like most other regions of the world, the European Union (EU) and the U.K. have been caught in the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and economic consequences. In April, the U.K., the world’s sixth largest economy, saw its output drop 20% from March and 25% from April 2019. The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics…

Energy R&D With the COVID-19 recession, restricted travel and dramatically reduced aerospace demand, demand and production of oil and gas declined more than 20% in the spring. Global oil prices crashed in April. The West Texas and Eastern New Mexico Permian Basin, with its fracking technologies, helped lead the U.S. into global oil leadership just…

Aerospace and defense R&D The commercial airline industry — both suppliers and operators — has been one of the hardest hit industries by the COVID-19 pandemic and is likely to be one of the longest affected industries as well. Boeing, Airbus and General Electric have seen their business models go from years-long production backlogs to…

Global pharmaceutical R&D The global biopharmaceutical R&D community has been tasked with finding a cure for the COVID-19 virus. The global health-care industry, up until this pandemic, had been one of the best performing sectors for the investment community. But since the rapid global expansion of the COVID-19 virus in April 2020, it has been…

Putting COVID-19 in perspective The COVID-19 pandemic is not unique. There have been similar events throughout history, including the H1N1-based influenza pandemic (Spanish Flu), which started in 1918 and was estimated to result in 50 million deaths worldwide (and 675,000 in the U.S.). The H3N2-based Hong Kong flu pandemic in 1968 was estimated to be…

By Tim Studt This special editorial section is an update to R&D World’s 2020 Global R&D Funding Forecast (GFF), which has been published annually since January 1959 (the first issue of R&D World’s predecessor, Industrial Research). The original 2020 GFF was created and published in the February 2020 issue of R&D World (and online at www.rdworldonline.com)…

What scientists and engineers need to know to help keep software, hardware and connected systems secure By Patricia Panchak, Contributing Writer In the cat-and-mouse struggle against bad actors in our inter-networked world, scientists and engineers are on the front lines. As developers of technology that can mean the difference between an adversarial breach and a…

By Anne Marie Knott To set the stage for a discussion of R&D metrics, let’s understand why companies do R&D in the first place. This takes us back to the beginning of the 20th Century. Companies formed labs to create new opportunities. In some cases, this was because existing business was disappearing and needed to…

Research infrastructures are increasingly important to research and development activity by providing access to the latest detection, imaging, computational and research techniques at scale. Maintaining and improving these infrastructures requires interdisciplinary skills bridging science, engineering, service provision and management, that are not usually provided by traditional training programs in academia or industry. “During the last years…

By Becky Chambers Hennessy Collaboration is among the flagship strategies of innovation for research scientists, engineers and technical professionals. Here, three R&D experts weigh in on China as it rises to become the world’s top R&D investor. They also address some of the benefits and challenges of openness in research, and the inclusion of foreign…

A look at whether “to innovate, collaborate” is always the best strategy when it comes to global R&D By Becky Chambers Hennessy If ever there were a need for innovation through intellectual exchange and collaboration it is this: the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), reportedly first identified in China. R&D experts worldwide know this, and the U.S.…

Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office According to a new study led by an MIT professor, the R&D tax credit has a significant effect on entrepreneurship. Moreover, the study finds a striking contrast between two types of tax credits. While the R&D tax credit fuels high-quality new-firm growth, the state-level investment tax credit, which supports…

By Matt McLellan, CEO Cayuse and Thomas Piechota, VP of Research, Chapman University As research groups work vigorously to continue to understand COVID-19 and develop a potential vaccine, inefficient research administration systems can lead to costly delays in securing and managing funding and allowing researchers to focus on what is important — the technical aspects…

The Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI) and Aon (NYSE: AON), an international professional services firm providing a range of risk, retirement and health solutions, released “Beyond Patents: IP Strategy, Valuation, and Management in Manufacturing” that delves into the current state of intellectual property (IP) in the sector. At its core, the research found…

The assembly of an R&D budget is a complicated process, often involving inputs from multiple organizations and/or departments. It also involves getting approvals from supervisors, from supervisors’ supervisors, and from other people with whom you may not work outside budgeting times. There are multiple factors involved in creating an R&D budget, from revenue growth to…

SP Industries (SP) CEO Brian Larkin has announced Robert (Rob) Darrington as the company’s new Vice President of Research & Development. Darrington was originally tapped to lead the department as well as serve on the SP Executive Leadership Team in an interim role in October of 2019. In announcing the permanent appointment, Larkin stated “Rob’s…

Technology growth in the R&D environment appears to be continuous and without much letup or increase in the rate of change. According to the respondents to R&D World magazine’s 2020 Global R&D Funding Forecast reader survey, performed in September 2019, most researchers have seen significant technology changes over the past year (September 2018 to September…

In the U.S., about 66% of the R&D is performed by industrial organizations, 27% is performed by the federal government and the remaining 7% is performed by academia and non-profit organizations. In Mexico, those ratios are about 51% by industry, 19% by government and 27% by academia. In Sweden it’s 74% by industry, 13% by…

Facing a Federal government shutdown deadline at midnight on Dec. 20th, a Presidential impeachment vote (on Dec. 18th) with a highly polarized Congress, the U.S. Congress, Senate and Administration voted on and signed into law (just hours before the Dec. 20th shutdown deadline) its final appropriations package for FY2020. The package included the Consolidated Appropriations…

Murata Manufacturing announces the launch of its Open Innovation website to create collaborative relationships with start-up organizations developing solutions in the mobility, energy, healthcare, and wireless markets. With its specific focus on start-up companies and universities, the site provides them the opportunity to explore go-to-market plans leveraging Murata’s extensive R&D capabilities, manufacturing support capabilities, and…

[Note: this report was finalized before the current COVID-19 crisis began.] We forecast the U.S. will invest $609.7 billion in R&D in 2020, an increase of 2.2% over the $596.6 billion invested in 2019. U.S. industrial organizations will invest approximately $401.8 billion, a 65.9% share of the total investment. The U.S. government will invest about…