Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

U.S. industry's interest in and implementation of research and development (R&D) program evaluation techniques has been evolving throughout the twentieth century. Due in large part to the amount of funds corporations are now investing in R&D programs, evaluation techniques continue to become increasingly important. In this article, the history of R&D and its evaluation within the 3M Company will be used as an example of this progression. The article discusses how U.S. industrial R&D has moved from individual or few-person efforts earlier this century to today's high-investment, large-scale team approaches. A review of the most frequently used U.S. industrial R&D program evaluation methods is included. Among these are scoring methods, cost/benefit analysis, and risk analysis. The largest part of the article is a description of the 3M technical audit process. In addition to discussing the procedural and scoring elements of the technical audit, emphasis is placed on how 3M attains a variety of benefits from the process. The article concludes with a summary of other activities that take place in 3M's Technology Analysis Department. These projects involve measuring R&D productivity and assessing the technological health (present and future) of 3M.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Cooper, R.G. 1986. Winning at new products. Reading, MA : Addison-Wesley.

—. 1992. The NewProd system: The industry experience. Journal of Product Innovation Management 9:113-27.

Ellis, L.W. 1989. Managing financial resources. In Managing research and development what we've learned in the past 50 years, edited by M. F. Wolff. New York : Industrial Research Institute.

Krogh, L.C. , J.H. Prager , D.P. Sorensen , J.D. Tomlinson. 1988. How 3M evaluates its R&D programs. In Research technology management, edited by M. F. Wolff. Washington, DC: Industrial Research Institute.

Roberts, E.B. 1989. Managing invention and innovation. In Managing research and development what we've learned in the past 50 years , edited by M. F. Wolff. New York: Industrial Research Institute.

Smith, J.K., Jr. 1990. The scientific tradition in American industrial research . In Technology and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Steele, L.W. 1989. Selecting R&D programs and objectives. In Managing research and development what we've learned in the past 50 years , edited by M. F. Wolff. New York: Industrial Research Institute.

Industrial R&D Program Evaluation Techniques

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References