Research, development and innovation are crucial to the success of businesses in an increasingly competitive marketplace. However it is a complex process to ensure that R&D projects lead to commercial outcomes.  R&D projects tend to be high risk and high cost and often don't provide the expected competitive advantage. Humphries Scientific provies a framework for a disciplined investment approach to R&D that specifically addresses innovation risk management. 

 

The framework is based on:

 

1. Analysing the company's business model

2. Identification of the company's customer value proposition

3. Carrying out an opportunity analysis to identify how technology innovation can enhance the company's value proposition

4. Identification of specific projects based on risk versus return

 

We then lower the risk and cost of the project by analysing the information which is available in the scientific literature.  There is an explosion in the growth of science information in the open access literature which provides a huge database that can be mined for information that can underpin and take the risk out of applied industrial research projects.

 

 

 

Based on this analysis, Humphries Scientific can plan and monitor the research project based on a risk management approach, Projects are managed through a series of stages and gates where decisions are made to proceed or terminate the project based on whether risk has been reduced sufficiently. The level of uncertainty should diminish as the projects pass through each stage.

 

It is through a disciplined approach of ensuring that projects are based on enhancing customer value and risks are manged throughout the planning and management of the project that the returns from R&D can be enhanced and competitive advantage gained.