The role of research and development (R&D) and innovation is to get your business into a competitive position and keep you there.
On this page:
What you need to look out for
What is research and development?
What is innovation?
What you need to look out for
Customers have high expectations. Businesses that don't meet customer expectations put their long-term survival at risk, so you must constantly be on the look-out for:
- new and better products
- better services
- more efficient processes
- new ways of delivering services
- strategies to get ahead of the competition.
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What is research and development?
Research and development is the process of creating new and improved products.
Discoveries resulting from R&D are often transferred to large corporations through sale, licence or other contractual arrangements to enable development and commercialisation of new products.
In small businesses R&D tends to focus more on product improvement because of budget and cost limitations.
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What is innovation?
Innovation is linked to creativity and is achieved through:
- implementing discoveries and inventions
- doing and using new things.
In business the term innovation is often used to refer to the commercialisation of new ideas, inventions, products, designs and resources.
You are most likely to discover ideas for innovation from internal sources such as management, marketing, finance and production. Externally, customers are likely to be your most significant source of ideas, followed by competitors.
Benefits from innovation
Competitive benefits from innovation include:
- increased quality
- greater customer satisfaction
- extended product range
- increased profits
- reduced costs
- improved production techniques.
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More information
On this site
How to innovate