R&D management conference explores new approaches as challenges mount

Technology forecasting, roadmapping and the expansion of open source development beyond its software roots are just some of the leading-edge issues in the evolving field of R&D management that were explored in the first North America edition of The R&D Management Conference. Hosted by the Univ of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management, more than 170 delegates from dozens of countries converged in Ottawa this week.

With a focus on new and emerging themes, the conference heard from a host of academic and industrial leaders in the field to explore effective new methods to address the rapidly changing field of R&D and challenges from nations such as China, India and Brazil.

"We're researching new methods and exploring what we should be looking at and we're always discussing this balance between academics and practitioners," says Jeff Butler, conference organizer, managing editor of R&D Management Magazine and a professor with the Manchester Business School at the Univ of Manchester. "Europe wants transformational innovation. It wants 3.1% of GDP spent on R&D and we're not getting there. The R&D is going to happen in China and other places so what are we going to do? We're not doing manufacturing and we're not doing R&D. It's a fundamental problem for the economy."

The Conference heard from several key players in Canadian R&D management, including Dr Hany Moustapha, senior fellow and manager of Pratt & Whitney Canada's technology programs. Moustapha outlined PW&C's detailed approach to managing sectorally disbursed R&D for its development of gas turbine engines. Despite tripling productivity over the past 10 years, the high Canadian dollar and low-cost, R&D performing nations such as India and China are negatively impacting on the firm, leading to a methodology that emphasizes R&D structure, strategy, integration, leveraging, R&D collaboration and skills.

Out on the leading edge, Dr Aled Edwards, CEO of the international Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), made the case for open source intellectual property for the pharmaceutical sector. With skyrocketing costs of drugs and the R&D that produces them, Edwards is proposing the widespread use of open source.

"With the parallelization of research, new organizational structures and new economic models are required," says Edwards. "To increase productivity, we need to stop whining and stop playing the blame game."

Next year's R&D Management Conference will be held July 1-3 in Manchester on the theme of "Information, Imagination and Intelligence in R&D Management".

R$