Alden S. Bean

21st-Century R&D

OVERVIEW: In May 2007, Richard Antcliff challenged IRI members with a presentation asserting the notion that “three tsunamis” were about to break upon R&D managers, demanding urgent response. Technological exponentials, global demographic shifts, and the phenomenon of climate change all posed challenges that promised to transform R&D. How are R&D managers responding to the perfect storm created by those tsunamis? Survey results and interviews of managers at nearly 60 IRI-member companies revealed a range of responses. Open innovation, globally dispersed R&D operations, and an emphasis on collaboration suggest that the R&D lab of the future is far less likely to be “a lab” (especially a single, central corporate lab) than an intricate, dynamic innovation ecosystem. Not only R&D managers, but senior executives and government policy makers as well will have new roles to map in this model for twenty-first-century R&D.