Innovation, Research and Development Management

235 Pages·2018·3.305 MB·English

by  Bobadilla, Natalia, Gastaldi, Lise, Gilbert, Patrick, Le Boulaire, Martine, Lelebina, Olga

Innovation, Research and Development Management

Innovation, Research
and Development
Management

Patrick Gilbert
Natalia Bobadilla
Lise Gastaldi
Martine Le Boulaire
Olga Lelebina
First published 2018 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
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ISTE Ltd John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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© ISTE Ltd 2018
The rights of Patrick Gilbert, Natalia Bobadilla, Lise Gastaldi, Martine Le Boulaire and Olga Lelebina to
be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018945213

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-300-4
Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
General Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Chapter 1. R&D and New Competitive Challenges: Between
Intensive Innovation Strategy and Internationalization . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1. Strategy and R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1. R&D’s place in business strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.2. Different generations of R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. Environmental factors influencing business strategies
in R&D and their consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2.1. The major role of innovation in competition strategies . . . . . . . . 9
1.2.2. The emergence of the consumer in R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.2.3. The effects of market globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3. R&D strategies tested overseas: the example of China . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.3.1. Western companies’ choice to locate their R&D in China . . . . . . 21
1.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Chapter 2. Work in R&D and its Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.1. Specifics of R&D work and its heterogeneity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.1.1. Non-routine and knowledge intensive work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.1.2. The work in R&D: between interactions and
engagements with the surrounding environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.1.3. A job characterized by a certain degree of
autonomy and occupational regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
vi Innovation, Research and Development Management
2.2. The main transformations of R&D work since 1990. . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.2.1. The advent of project management and of the
concurrent engineering model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.2.2. A job which is more interactive and
more dependent on the downstream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.2.3. Managerialization, bureaucratization
and remoteness of technical work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.3. Current tensions and open questions as
to the future of work in R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3.1. Increasing pressure and strong focus in the short
term: how sustainable is this in individual and collective terms? . . . . . . 56
2.3.2. Relocation, internationalization, outsourcing
and open innovation: what is the future of R&D work? . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2.3.3. The digital revolution: what is the impact on work in R&D? . . . . 64
2.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Chapter 3. Rationalization and Creativity: R&D under Pressure . . . 69
3.1. Permanent rationalizations and reduction
of available resources in R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.1.1. The rationalization concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.1.2. R&D struggling with permanent rationalization . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.1.3. Rationalization as a slack reduction strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.2. Creativity: between individual attribute and social process . . . . . . . . 77
3.2.1. Individual creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.2.2. Creativity as an idea production process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.2.3. Creativity as a social process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.3. Ingredients and negative effects of slack reductions on creativity . . . . 84
3.3.1. Slack reduction components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.3.2. Human slack reduction effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.3.3. “Financial slack” reduction effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
3.3.4. Temporal slack reduction effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.3.5. Spatial slack reduction effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.4. Mechanisms linking slack reduction and creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.4.1. Focus of attention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.4.2. Ability to “travel through time” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3.4.3. Support provided by the leader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
3.5. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Chapter 4. Managing R&D Professionals: HRM
Practices and Current Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.1. HRM and R&D: complex relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Contents vii
4.1.1. R&D: a world that has long remained
foreign to HRM regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
4.1.2. Recurrent tension between
standardization and differentiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.1.3. Project organization: a necessary
source of adaptation of HRM in R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4.2. HRM development in R&D today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.2.1. Strategic HR planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.2.2. Recruitment and integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4.2.3. Assignments and mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
4.2.4. Individual assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
4.2.5. Remuneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
4.2.6. Careers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.2.7. Competence management and training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.3. The new challenges of HRM in R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
4.3.1. Moving beyond an instrumental approach
and adapting to the diversity of contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
4.3.2. Renewing (or reinventing) HRM in
open innovation models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
4.3.3. Going beyond individualized HRM by
integrating the collective dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Chapter 5. Collective Expertise:
Forms and Methods of Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
5.1. Collective expertise in R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.1.1. The dual facet of expertise: individual
attribute and collective process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.1.2. Collective expertise and its current status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
5.2. Two forms of structuring: “horizontal” and “vertical” . . . . . . . . . . 142
5.2.1. Horizontal structuring: interdisciplinary
communities of expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
5.2.2. Vertical structuring: monodisciplinary
communities of expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5.3. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Chapter 6. Performance Management in R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
6.1. Performance in R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
6.1.1. A hard to define concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
6.1.2. Management difficulties specific to R&D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
viii Innovation, Research and Development Management
6.1.3. Performance challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
6.1.4. The delicate issue of measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
6.2. Budgetary control of R&D departments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
6.3. Innovation project management control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
6.3.1. Economic assessment of projects: the two approaches . . . . . . . . 171
6.3.2. Project management methods and tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
6.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197