R&D v NPI - Do you differentiate

CatFromHue

Just wondering do you think R&D and NPI (New Product Introduction) are actually different things.

One of the first places I worked had a small R&D dept that worked on concepts/features that were initial examinations to see if they could work or could possibly work. That company also had a much larger NPI dept that worked on bring products to the market.

Another company I worked in had an R&D dept that was kinda big, would have done no research, and imo only really worked on bringing products to the market.

To me the first company had both the R&D NPI working as they should whereas the second company pretty much used R&D because it sounds sexier than NPI.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this as I'm looking at some job adverts at the moment and they say they're looking for R&D exp but what they list in the job functions looks more like NPI.

Turbulent Bill

They can (and should) be different things, but in most companies I've found they are essentially the same. Some big innovative companies (think Bell Labs in the past) have almost a pure research remit, with no need to support current or future products, but that's rare now. A company I used to work for had separate R&D and NPI departments, which were merged as there was no real distinction between what each was doing.

In your average Irish SME, the R&D and/or NPI engineers are as likely to be getting product out the door as they are doing blue -sky concepts.

who_am_I?

In our company NPI is the interface between Design and Operations, R&D is an earlier phase to Commercialized Product Development, and Process Development.
It depends on the size of the company

mr potato head

Most of my work is in lower technology readiness levels (TRL), up to 7 on this scale. I'd see them as zones on the TRL scale, maybe 1-7 for R&D and somewhere like 5-9 for NPI.
But as mentioned this is not necessarily as they are labelled in industry or by HR departments in job adverts. You could argue that the development part in R&D could be taken as right up to product release.

The first company I worked at ran an Innovation Team for the R&D, this was a stand alone group developing technologies and these were passed (almost sold) to the other product areas for NPI. The other product areas would request support in implementing the technology, but most of the time it was just small bits of support using the specialist tools or software they didn't have. This was a great model, but I think it works better for large companies with big budgets.
I think most small/medium companies feel they can't afford the risk of blue sky R&D, as Bill says they are trying to get product out the door as much as researching. In my experience they bring the research in from outside the company, sources like universities or people with good ideas looking for a route to market.

A few years ago I took a role in an Irish company looking to expand into a new area of high value manufacturing. The job was described as an R&D role. When the true time-frame and cost of R&D became clear they shut the new department down again. While the payback could have been huge they really wanted to manufacture product and are still doing that very well in their other areas.

On a slightly different note, The university sector in the UK is very good at risk sharing with SMEs. Where I work now we support industry partners in R&D, we bridge the gap from pure university research to industry. We work in TRL 3-7 and the companies focus on the TRL 5-9. It's essentially outsourcing R&D but the companies can apply for government or EU funding to support it.

Turbulent Bill

mr potato head wrote: »

A few years ago I took a role in an Irish company looking to expand into a new area of high value manufacturing. The job was described as an R&D role. When the true time-frame and cost of R&D became clear they shut the new department down again. While the payback could have been huge they really wanted to manufacture product and are still doing that very well in their other areas.

On a slightly different note, The university sector in the UK is very good at risk sharing with SMEs. Where I work now we support industry partners in R&D, we bridge the gap from pure university research to industry. We work in TRL 3-7 and the companies focus on the TRL 5-9. It's essentially outsourcing R&D but the companies can apply for government or EU funding to support it.

I think SMEs in general have a poor understanding of the time and cost required to implement 'real' R&D, stuff outside of their usual comfort zone. For smaller companies there's huge (and necessary) opportunity cost in tying people to R&D programmes, which is rarely estimated correctly at the start. Any squeeze in resources and the 'nerdy stuff' gets the bullet.

There's a reasonable amount of funding here for university-industry collaborations, but again the management of these is tricky. I've worked on both sides of the fence, and matching expectations with what you can deliver is a constant struggle.

mr potato head

Turbulent Bill wrote: »

There's a reasonable amount of funding here for university-industry collaborations, but again the management of these is tricky. I've worked on both sides of the fence, and matching expectations with what you can deliver is a constant struggle.

I've noticed that there is a lot of work being put into developing the key research areas for the country, Enterprise Ireland and the SFI etc. From the outside it seems to be getting better in terms of funding and results.
Unfortunately my work isn't one of the focus areas for funding so I haven't been involved in Ireland.