Lab notes

Michael Kenward

How to manage a virtual R&D team, valuing research – and other insights into R&D management

Too busy to read what they write about R&D? Never fear. At Science|Business we love this stuff. Here’s the cream off the top of recent publications.

Keeping Virtual R&D Teams Creative

Globalisation can affect R&D as much as it affects other corporate activities. After all, makers of computers and mobile telephones, to pick just two high-profile examples, often contract out much of their development work. Then there is the company with R&D labs in more than one location.

Both phenomena pose a challenge to R&D managers: how do you keep these “virtual teams” on the boil? Jan Kralzer, Roger Leenders and Jo van Engelen have investigated this issue from their positions as business researchers in the University of Groningen, and published their results. The trio looked at 11 Dutch companies and asked 243 people in 44 R&D groups “to assess the number of new ideas, methods, approaches, inventions, or applications in comparison to other teams that did the same or similar kind of work”.

First, they warn, don’t get too carried away with the virtual thing. “Distributed teams have characteristics very similar to those of individuals working in the same building. For this reason, we do not distinguish between virtual and non-virtual R&D teams; rather, we consider virtuality to be a matter of degree.”

They highlight three factors that “characterize the degree of virtuality”. Virtual teams are: physically dispersed; use computers to drive communication; and have to interact with one another.

Proximity, the researchers tell us, at first sight seems to encourage creativity; but another view is that scientists have to work alone, so social interaction distracts them. And working in a close team “can decrease the quality of critical thinking and push team members toward mutually-held beliefs”.

Their bottom line is that “constant close proximity appears dysfunctional to the creative performance of R&D teams”. The solution, then, is that “R&D teams will function most creatively when management can vary the proximity of team members; in other words, temporarily move co-located members to other locations while co-locating previously dispersed members”.

So, move people around, seems to be the message.

Their second point deals with “communication modalities,” how people communicate, face-to-face, computer-mediated, and so on. Their take is that “teams that have the ability to move between various modes of communication and employ each whenever necessary can be the most creative”.

When they turn their attention to “team task coordination” the academics conclude that how you go about it should depend on the task in hand. “If tasks are not interdependent, there is little need for [the team] to work together and to communicate.”

The researchers bring their analysis together by looking at how variability in the three factors influences creativity. The more variable the factors the more creative the R&D teams, it seems. As they put it: “this study shows that the variability with which teams employ each factor determines much of their creative performance. Regardless of the task to be solved, team-level creative performance suffers if team members are always co-located or always dispersed.”

No need to worry, then, about running virtual R&D. You just have to manage it effectively. “Virtuality is neither generally positive nor negative with respect to the creative performance of R&D teams; their creative outcome is a function of how virtuality is managed.”

Get the full story here: Research Technology Management, Vol 48, No.2, p 13

Is R&D really worth it?

The UK government may think R&D helps a company’s share price (see FACT CHECK) but not all agree. Booz Allen offers a contradictory view with a survey of 1000 businesses. The press release for the reports (download them and judge for yourself) kicks off with the statement "There is no direct relationship between R&D spending and significant measures of corporate success such as growth, profitability, and shareholder return."

But it says later: "Companies in the bottom 10% of R&D spending as a percentage of sales under-perform competitors on gross margins, gross profit, operating profit, and total shareholder returns. However, companies in the top 10% showed no consistent performance differences compared to companies that spend less on R&D."

So spending pots of cash on R&D may not be a guarantee of success, but spending not much spells failure. The clue to what is going on is probably the comment that "Superior results seem to be a function of the quality of an organization's innovation process—the bets it makes and how it pursues them—rather than either the absolute or relative magnitude of its innovation spending."

OST: Guidelines 2000

A lot of new technology raises policy questions. Will public concerns reduce the market for nanotechnology? Do we have to worry about animal testing for our products? So it helps to understand the basis of the scientific advice that governments receive. Sir "Dave" King has just released the updated guidelines on scientific advice in policymaking. It might be a good idea for CTOs to look at these and see if they need to change the way in which they offer scientific advice to.

Research Councils UK: 2005/06 Business Plan Competition

The academic world has come a long way since the days when it was not the done thing to think "commerce", when professors looked down their noses at business. Now having your own company is a badge of honour.

And competitions abound for business plans. The UK's research councils have come together to promote their own competition. "Helping researchers turn great research in to great business - that’s the aim of the Research Councils’ Business Plan Competition."

The true test of these competitions is what happens to the winners. Last year's winner,ThruVision Ltd, isn't just still with us, it is "due to start rolling out a range of security screening products at the end of 2005". The company, a spin-out from the CCLRC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, is in security imaging.

The prize itself, £25,000, could well be a useful addition to the coffers of a cash starved start up. Winning weill also do little harm to a start-ups visibility and might even make potential investors show interest.