R&D

Socially liberal policies resulted in more and better patents.

We need computers with some common sense.

For generations, Procter & Gamble generated most of its phenomenal growth by innovating from within--building global research facilities and hiring the...

No more looking away from the patient to gather data.

Product R&D at many companies is a major bottleneck. The difficulty is that fully understanding the needs of just a single customer can be an inexact...

U.S. business needs to understand how science and technology influence industrial competitiveness. Even in high-tech products, like computer memories, the U.S. trade surplus declined sharply early in the 1980s, and we were in deficit by 1986. How could this be happening to the greatest scientific power in the world—the home of the most Nobel laureates […]

Without a vaccine, testing to identify who has the virus is crucial to containing it.

By placing a premium on predictability in their product development efforts, companies create a technology landscape that’s easier to navigate—but one that may produce fewer true breakthroughs.

Stagecraft can help you test customer behavior.

Ideas don't sell themselves.

More than you think—a lot more—if yours is a knowledge-based corporation. That’s because you need to provide for intangible liabilities—the investments a company has to make to realize the benefits of its knowledge.

Academic–industry alliances have been around long enough to sprout their own ivy, yet these staples of technology innovation have undergone little innovation themselves. Now a few companies are pioneering ways to get more out of university research. One particularly successful model comes from Porsche, which has brought academic brainpower inside. A few years ago, Porsche, […]

Offering nothing is better than a small prize.

“The key to achieving competitive advantage isn’t reacting to chaos; it’s producing that chaos.”

As an outgrowth of the diversification trend in U.S. corporations, in which companies are expanding their product lines and entering new businesses, portfolio models have gained wider acceptance. General Electric is perhaps the best-known exponent of the portfolio approach. The models fall into two general categories—the standardized approaches, which usually concentrate on growth and share […]

A conversation with Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier

Medicine needs to broaden its application of algorithms.

Businesses often face big, messy problems—challenges that defy precise definition, change constantly, and have numerous causes. To find solutions, says Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and author of The Design of Business (Harvard Business Press), managers must move through a “knowledge funnel” comprising three stages: staring into the […]

Biotech has not delivered on its promise because the industry’s structure—much of it borrowed from Silicon Valley—is flawed. Businesses engaged in advancing basic science as a core activity need a new design.

Collaborating with governments, businesses, and research institutions.