Frost & Sullivan's Growth Team Membership™ (GTM) recently completed its 2012 survey of R&D/innovation and product development executives throughout Europe. The executives were asked to identify their most pressing challenges for 2012. GTM will focus its best practices research to address the prominent issues identified in the survey.
R&D/Innovation and Product Development in 2012 - A Snapshot
- Generating an accurate and relevant technology roadmap is the primary challenge of R&D/innovation executives
- Insufficient personnel is the root cause of R&D's primary challenge
- In comparison to 2011, budgets are expected to increase, but staffing levels will remain static in 2012
- The majority of companies do not have staff assigned to open innovation
- Open innovation is pursued primarily for idea generation
- Measuring the impact of open innovation on product development efforts is the primary challenge with open innovation
2012 R&D/Innovation and Product Development Survey Executive Summary
The survey reveals that R&D executives continue to struggle with doing effective portfolio planning and leveraging a wide network for idea generation. Moreover, respondents are challenged by how to generate an accurate technology map - outlining customer needs, available solutions, and technology gaps - to guide portfolio planning and project prioritization. The other prominent challenge is a perennial one, identifying the next breakthrough idea.
To examine these challenges in more depth, the survey asked respondents to "root cause" their top challenges by indicating if they stem from issues with staffing, process, technology/systems, or strategic alignment. R&D executives attribute their challenges to two primary causes: limitations in staffing and processes. R&D executives are unlikely to see additional staff in 2012; most respondents expect staffing level to remain static. On a positive note, budgets are expected to increase in 2012. Despite the emphasis on breakthrough innovation, most of the budget increases will be allocated to short-, medium-term, and incremental innovation projects.
