Success factors in R&D: A meta-anlysis of the empirical literature and derived implications for design management

Design Management Journal, 2002 by Brown, Kenneth, Schmied, Helwig, Tarondeau, Jean-Claude

Introduction

In our world of shortening product life cycles and standardized products, design has become the chief means of differentiating product ranges from those of competitors, creating additional perceived value for customers, and building up a recognizable brand image. For this reason, design has in many organizations become a central corporate function,1 and the management of design has evolved into a profession and scientific discipline in its own right (Chung, 1998). Today, design management may be considered an integrative discipline that unites the efforts of an organization with a view to creating a product or service offering that is both appealing to customers and in line with longer-term corporate objectives.

As an integrative discipline, design management is highly interdependent of other corporate functions in its endeavors, and necessitates close interfacing with functions such as marketing, production, and R&D (Borja de Mozota, 1998). The product creation process is particularly affected by this. Indeed, the future success of a product is typically determined as much by its technical properties as by its aesthetic appearance. In order to play its integrative role in the overall product development effort effectively, design management needs to take the contributions of the technical functions, especially R&D, into account.

This article is a cross-disciplinary effort aimed at linking the discipline of design management to that of R&D management. The first step in this endeavor is the exploitation of the knowledge accumulated on the subject so far. Using a systems approach, we present a framework that summarizes the current state of knowledge of what determines the success and failure in R&D in such a way that it may be used for management purposes.

Anticipating, somewhat, the results presented here, it is interesting to note that in this field, very little research has been devoted to the impact of aesthetic properties on innovation success, while in design management, it appears that technological considerations are much less represented (Veryzer, 2000). We therefore expect our findings to be highly complementary to the discipline of design management, and will therefore briefly discuss our interpretation of the implications for design management in the conclusion of this article.

Literature on R&D management

Management scholars and professionals have recognized that R&D is one of the corporate functions most difficult to manage. Its outcome is by definition uncertain, thus making it difficult to plan, predict, and optimize. To make things worse, its engineers and scientists are extremely averse to any type of control exerted by "unproductive" administrative staff (Allison, 1969). On the other hand, successful R&D may lead to considerable profitability through product and process innovation. For this reason, a wide range of literature discusses how R&D should best be organized and managed. To constitute a sound basis of the current state of knowledge, we have left anecdotal literature aside and concentrated on sources of empirical evidence.

Empirical studies on the factors influencing the outcome of R&D emerged in the 1950s and '60s, most notably the studies of Carter and Williams, 1957, 1958; Burns and Stalker, 1961; and Myers and Marquis, 1969. In 1972, project SAPPHO suggested a methodology for comparing pairs of successful and failed innovations under similar boundary conditions. Using statistical means, successes and failures of individual innovations are compared with the occurrences of certain conditions or actions in an effort to find the most pertinent "success factors."2 This methodology of pair-wise comparison was adopted by a series of subsequent studies on the same topic, and included new definitions of success, such as technical success, respect of budget and time constraints, customer satisfaction, and overall perceived success. Other similar studies follow a different approach by asking executives their opinions of what causes success and failure in R&D projects (Myers and Sweezy, 1978; Peters and Waterman, 1982; Slevin and Pinto, 1986), yet it must be noted that the results of these surveys are seldom tested.3

The available number of R&D success factor studies is overwhelmingly large, and so is the number of ascertained success factors. Our first analysis counted more than 300 distinct success factors for R&D. In order to create an overview of factors that determine R&D success, nevertheless, we exploited only studies with sufficiently representative samples and clear results, and we consolidated success factors from different studies when there was a clear similarity. The current sample of 96 exploited sources includes not only well-known studies in the Anglo-Saxon hemisphere, but also sources found in German and French literature.4

Review approach

Apart from their sheer number, the main difficulty in providing a comprehensive overview of R&D success and failure factors is the difficulty in finding appropriate categories. The factors identified in literature are very different in kind; they do not at all seem to "fit" together to form a comprehensible whole. Using a systems approach, we distinguish between factors that may be controlled from within the organization (or group of organizations) carrying out an R&D effort, and external factors (Balachandra and Friar, 1997). Uncontrollable factors, however, include not only external characteristics of the environment, but also factors that are uncontrollable because they are the unchangeable results of earlier behavior and actions (Rothwell, 1977). Similarly, factors that can only be influenced before the project begins, but no longer once it is underway, are also considered uncontrollable. Together, these uncontrollable factors constitute a set of variables that need to be taken into account through appropriate action within the organization if the R&D effort is to be successful.