Does Research Work?

Driving in today I thought a bit about the role of research in a big company - it's something I've always pondered, and half-wonder about writing something some day on how research happens, and what makes it work, when it really does work. Illustrations from the real world will be the key

So how does research work really? I mean there are a bunch of values that companies get out of research - in no particular order, and probably not exhaustively,

1. Future Biz: Creates path forward for products


2. Int & Ext Perception:Creates a sense of a forward looking company


3. Join the Club: Allows company to participate in a ecosystem of research - ie with prominent institutes and universities


4. Investor Cred: Balance sheets are expected to show 10-15% research spending


5. Inertia: We've always had a research group


6. Pals: Powerful cronies in the organization like the role/prestige


7. PR: you can make press announcements about big advances that add to your corp image even if they are impractical and never get to market


8. Sales Support: Buy one of these, and here's a demo of what it will do for you in 10years from now. (You'll already be familiar with the platform).
   

In my field, er, oceanography, I see elements of all that stuff. We had two research groups. I think one of them was around to address reason "future biz", and had a bit of "join the club" and "PR". The other group was mainly about "Join the club", "Inertia" and "PR".

Now that we're merged, it's hard to say what the new organization is or will be. Will we dick around in ocean and wave our banner, or come up with next generation oceanography products and help our firm be a leading oceanography firm. I see more 'power' in the the latter group is influencing the direction more than the former, so I suspect the Club, Intertia and PR points will continue to drive the business, while future biz will be a bit of a struggle.

There's always a struggle to get buy-in from product groups to see value in the research. We have been doing better than most - in that we tend to get buy-in on the idea before we get too far into the research. But now, I think we have both that barrier and some new philosophical barriers as well.

But the biggest barrier continues to be my lack of budget info and growth of my team of researchers beyond the pitiful two that I have currently. Ugh.