Our Services
What We Do
Concept to Research Mandate
The challenge
Corporate leaders have differing perspectives of their research centres on timeframe, technology, autonomy and even its purpose (e.g., bolster current business vs. create future markets). Personalities come in the way too as sponsors and scientists advocate their ideas which can slow progress or spawn more projects. Lastly, a hard-fought alignment will drift over time as market dynamics and corporate strategy evolve.
What we do
We help shape the research mandate using a managed consultative and discovery process. A structured methodology and objective approach bridges gaps and aligns interests. The codification of the concept helps the company:
- protect its core businesses from disruption and build future growth platforms
- improve returns from existing research spending
- create intangible capital
- build reputation and leave behind a legacy
Business Case & Blueprint
The challenge
R&D centres find it hard to frame a business case and negotiate budgets. The programs are multi-year, entail stage costs (piloting, testing, certification), and must allow for pivots (following new insights, revised confidence level, new grants, reallocation). The spend is also vulnerable to conservative managers and investor pressures, facing larger cuts in a slow year as compared to say advertising or training spend. The costs of getting these decisions wrong is high. Underfunded projects will fall behind and talent & institutional knowledge will dissipate away.
What we do
We help R&D centres draft a robust business case using a framework tailored for them. This unbundles the program, say, into strategic projects (multiyear, critical), tactical (opportunistic, closer to commercialization), core capabilities (lab facilities, platforms, talent), moonshots (high-risk, blue ocean), and partnerships. The ask is supported with benchmarking, relevance to strategy, impact and scope to distil value. The outputs provide clarity (strategy alignment, timelines, tech), resources (funding, infrastructure, ecosystem), and institutional model.
R&D Build & Consolidate
The challenge
Disruption spends years in labs and reshapes markets in months. And companies that invest in research are the ones leading this change. They also rightly worry about the speculative nature of long-range bets, inefficiency that's hard to find, and misalignment that drags on too long before correction.
What we do
We help leaders envision and set up an independent corporate research centre. Or consolidate their existing fragmented R&D projects and islands of COEs into a single facility capable of producing breakthroughs and creating a long-term strategic advantage. We work together to evolve the concept, research mandate, investment case and the operating model. The systems we put in also ensure focus, productivity and value (via collaboration, partnerships, knowledge management).
R&D Effectiveness & Turnaround
The challenge
A research portfolio accumulates distractions and costs over a period of time. It comes from projects with diminished prospects, changed conditions, resources spread thinly or divergence between portfolio's time horizon and its impact. Projects drift due to funding cuts or lack of technological readiness or business engagement. They may still show a lot of activity (e.g., publications, patents, prototypes) but lack business impact.
What we do
We undertake portfolio review to address these blockers, reorganise or consolidate and tap value (using insights, ideas, developments). The approach is specific to the horizon viz., current products & production processes, adjacencies (products, markets, technologies), and breakthrough research. We work with inhouse teams on standardisation of workflows, automation (data, modelling, tools), and knowledge management (decisions, failures, tests).
Talent and Organisation
The challenge
Corporate labs suffer gaps in critical disciplines as promising researchers are attracted to academia, pedigreed labs or startups for the promise of a better role, recognition and support system. These labs face a mismatch of skills (legacy vs emerging fields, digital vs physical sciences) that may also be underutilized and misdirected.
What we do
We help companies adapt their talent policies to address this. The options, tailored to the situation, include offering dual career tracks, time to pursue independent projects, incentives, rotation to business, and exchange programs with academia. We work on organisation design to drive collaboration, bring together interdisciplinary skills and build integrating structures.
Infrastructure & Partnerships
The challenge
Infrastructure build involves significant decisions (specifications, procurement models, total cost of operation) and over time parts of it may get underutilized, under-perform or become unsuited to the priorities.
What we do
We tailor standard business practices (asset monitoring, framework agreements) to be put in place of loosely applied ways of working. Partnerships and alliances can help us manage capex but should be integrated within the roadmap to not lose on speed or the proprietary advantage.
Value Channels
The challenge
Corporate leaders administer a fine balance between strategic autonomy and tactical engagement. The latter is as important in value realisation viz., learning from dead-ends, understanding complexity and timelines, and leveraging early signals and insights gained from research.
What we do
We help design the tactical engagement between the company and its research centre. This permits advance preparation for managing IP and regulatory consents, for scale-up and manufacturing, to build know-how for acquisition and market strategy, besides the defensive actions (e.g., testing, trade secrets, competitive positioning). The work helps identify and manage the value channels.
Talk to us about your research strategy.
If you're running a private industrial group and wish to shape your future through original research, this is the conversation to have.
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