NEEDHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Goldense Group, Inc. [GGI] announces the completion of its sixth primary research initiative on the strategies, processes, practices, and metrics used in North American R&D and Product Development Innovation. This study focused on R&D Operations, Organic Innovation, Open Innovation [OI], Intellectual Property [IP], and the Top 100 Productivity & Performance Metrics used by corporations.
Two hundred companies from the US, Canada, and Mexico participated in equal proportion to the relative R&D Spending of these three countries, representative of North America. The response rate was 6.5%. A typical respondent company had US$ 4-5B in revenues.
While the relative corporate activity in Basic Research, Applied Research, Advanced Development, and Product Development remained largely constant for the past five years, the infrastructure in these areas experienced significant growth. Growth will continue. Two-thirds indicated innovation will be more important in the next five years than in the past five. Half indicated the same for OI.
The emerging OI and IP marketplaces, corporate enablers to monetize soft assets, continued to grow. Scouting and innovation intermediary firms achieved 15% penetration. Joint innovation ventures are reported by more than a third of respondents. Corporate abilities to track revenues and profits lag abilities to track costs, this is especially true for OI.
Seventy percent indicate that IP will be more or much important in the next five years. Three quarters indicate that the financial impact of IP is positive, none indicated negative. Over a third indicated they have formalized processes for monetizing IP. Thirty percent are changing their Trade Secret practices, now that First-To-File has become law in the United States.
After fifteen years of little change in corporate metrics for R&D and Product Development, there has been a sea change in the use of metrics to focus on business results in the past five years. The "R&D sand box" is almost gone. Twenty-three of the Top 25 metrics now measure pipeline attributes, productivity, and results.
These findings are excerpts from two available reports on GGI's 2014 Product Development Metrics Survey. Findings are also located in Driving Product Development™ and Tangible Innovation!™, and will be discussed at the 17th R&D-Product Development Metrics Summit in mid April.
