In systems design, the dilemma of Distributing or Centralizing resources, access, etc. is often posed. As a telecom engineer I have seen the evolution of networks from the client-server approach to the wild P2P data sharing solutions. In telecoms, at least, it does not seem to be an either-or situation. A healthy mixture of both worlds seems to be a good solution to the challenge of giving people access to services and content.
Let’s move that dilemma to a more human network, our work network. How should knowledge be running in the company? Distributed or Centralized? Well, as far as the latest KM and e-learning theories point out (at least when I was studying them), it seems to be also a mixture of distribution and centralization of efforts. Companies build centralized systems (e.g. KX, myLearning…) and facilitate ad hoc knowledge distribution (e.g. Office Communicator, WebEx). Even if in some of these examples it is difficult to know if the collaboration tool has been created to distribute knowledge or to make sure that knowledge is kept in a central point and, therefore, not lost.
What about R&D? And specially technology R&D? Should a company focus its efforts in developing an R&D group or should it make innovation mandatory no matter the group? Some people might guess that since I am a researcher, I should advocate for creating an R&D group. The truth is that I do not think so. If we look at the most innovative companies, the majority of them start-ups or former start-ups, innovation is mainstream all over the organization and the reason for their success. BUT, and there is a big but, what happens to these companies when they evolve into maintenance mode? That is, when they are not young companies anymore and they deal with the daily market toughness, business trivialities (HR and others) to survive, to continue making money against competitors. That mainstream innovation fades away into the business processes and tasks, and the need to have a specialized group seems to appear: they create their R&D groups.
During my last 10 years doing research I have observed that there seems to be a relationship between business success and investment in R&D. Nevertheless, I do not think there is a direct relationship of the kind “the more a company spends in R&D the more successful it is”. So where is the trick? Should we have a concrete R&D investment? Definitively. How much? Difficult to know.
I believe that innovation is an attitude, a mixture of technical skills, creativity and imagination. I suppose that it’s difficult to do certain business processes and tasks keeping that attitude, so the creation of a group that mainly focuses on making sure that “attitude” doesn't disappear is necessary. So with this I am back onto exposing that R&D, at the end, is also a healthy combination of distributed versus centralized resources that just focus on that attitude.
I believe successful companies distribute their R&D from the “specialized group” to the mainstream better than competitors. The key to success is to breed and reinforce with policies a curiosity culture that naturally pulls innovation from the centralized R&D into the mainstream. I say pull from R&D, instead of push, because the groups that really have a motivation to make the effort required to make the technology transfer are those that will gain a competitive advantage (R&D does not gain anything from sharing R&D). Although most big companies practice the R&D push (R&D managers selling their ideas to the mainstream), I have little faith that kind of approach actually goes anywhere.
(from Accenture Post on the 8/09/2009)
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