It is broadly believed that substantial investments in R&D innovation guarantee increased sales. Many are dead sure that the research and development department funding certainly brings innovative processes to the company. Unfortunately, it is not that simple.
Let’s discover how Research & Development and Innovation work and figure out their differences. Our Gravum business experts will also share secrets of the successful combining of R&D and innovation with you.
R&D-Innovation: How They Work Together
Just to be clear, Research & Development and innovation are not the same things. Here’s more: R&D is often an early stage of innovation, but it can be vice versa. Let’s consider both in detail to understand how R&D and innovation differ from each other and find out what makes them similar.
Research And Development: Gradual Incremental Improvement Engine
R&D strives to fulfill the following 3 business aims:
- Developing fundamental technology knowledge. Research & Development department explores the market of existing technologies to find promising opportunities in unused technologies with high potential;
- Developing and implementing cutting-edge technologies. Research and development experts come up with new implementation solutions. They aim at improving a product qualitatively;
- Supporting existing business areas. Business and customer management always have room for improvement. A company can put an R&D focus on enhancing customer satisfaction, for instance.
As you can see, we can describe the better part of R&D activities as incremental and gradual ones.
Here are some examples of typical R&D innovation team objectives:
- User experience improvement via UI refactoring;
- Product releases development;
- Technology stack migration.
These are gradual improvements brought into the product from version to version. Research & Development Innovation department can literally spend a decade implementing the technology idea, making it more and more user-friendly and widely spread.
Innovation: The Game-Changing Concepts
As for the innovation process, it is often a spark of an idea, light shed on the whole industry or even the world as we know it. Innovation differs from Research & Development by its spontaneous nature. The genius concept may come to the dreamer overnight, while R&D is often focused on long-term improvements and enhancements.
Here are the innovation examples:
- iPhone as the solid beginning of the smartphone era;
- Virtual assistant Siri;
- Social network concept established by Facebook;
- AWS Cloud Computing Services;
- Blockchain transaction ledger.
As you may have noticed, these are the real game-changers, ideas that – once implemented – transform the world beyond recognition. Innovation is often not about the technical approach, it is about the radical change in our understanding of the things we use every day.
R&D and Innovation: How They Work Together
When it comes to Research and Development-innovation combination, one usually enters the scene right after another. Let us explain: the whole concept of smartphones brought to the public by the iPhone is undoubtedly exceptional.
However, we would not see such progress in this market sector without Research & Development Innovation team forces. They do their best to bring more and more functional and reliable technology to life.
The things may happen in reverse order. For instance, the extensive work on business algorithm optimization brings your R&D team to the understanding that there are far greater innovation opportunities than you could possibly expect. This means your R&D has paved the way for innovation.
On the whole, the full cycle of innovating something includes both R&D and innovation forces.
Funding Issue: How to Balance Your Research and Development Innovation Budget
One of the most substantial innovation issues for businesses is budget planning and distribution. Our Gravum R&D and innovation experts believe that both departments need investments to provide quality results for your business.
As we all understand, an idea without proper implementation is hardly an advantage. At the same time, R&D efforts are rather inefficient when focused on the plain incremental improvement of the existing technology.
To sum up, balancing your budget between Research & Development and Innovation teams is a winning strategy in most cases.
The Bottom Line
As far as innovation is concerned, we need both dreamers and technicians to bring outstanding concepts to life. The same applies to the business industry. R&D and innovation achieve different goals. Nevertheless, you need them both to come up with and produce truly innovative technology.
If you are looking for quality Research and Development Innovation services, reach out to our Gravum R&D experts. We are fuelled for success and have extensive expertise in this domain. Choose Gravum R&D and Innovation services, become a part of making this world a better place.
