R&D management in Japan
Roland Berger is helping R&D power to reemerge.
In today's deflationary environment, the R&D activities of Japanese companies are limited to short-term themes, while the idea of high-risk, high-return long-term themes is being relegated to universities and research institutions. Roland Berger is helping R&D power to reemerge.
While R&D at Japanese companies covers specialized areas such as automobiles, high-tech appliances, mobile phones, expert technology and specialty chemicals, in some areas essential technology is the global de facto standard, for example the OS and MPU in computing.
As China rises, companies are moving not only production, but also parts of their R&D departments overseas. Today, the raison d’être of Japanese manufacturing and R&D-related service industries is being questioned. The future focus will be not only licensing, but key products and modules centered on black box technology that cannot be imitated, market proximity, and total optimization. Yet, most companies lack clarity on where to seek the source of their future competitive capability. We take the following approach.
1. Analysis of a company’s technical strategy system: We go beyond the objective redefinition of strategic technologies, defining the role of internal technology based on its relationship to business strategy, and create an overall design for optimizing R&D strengths as an ecosystem. We also develop a mechanism for identifying technology to be outsourced and for outsourcing it.
2. Next-generation R&D organizational operation: Speed and sharing (of knowledge and values) will be critical in the future. A balance score card tailored to a company’s R&D characteristics and KPI (key performance indicators) that match its development processes are important. We also keep an eye to relationships with external partners.
3. Intelligence management: R&D that results in innovation requires not only knowledge management, but also intelligence management. This covers technology, the market and business intelligence, and must be integrated on an organizational basis.
4. Integrated personnel management: The “key person” drives R&D management. This person designs a portfolio including specialists, hybrid technology-business types and market-oriented types, and considers external and overseas candidates when hiring.
5. Corporate venture capital: It is said that venture capital imitating the Silicon Valley model is difficult to replicate in Japanese companies. This is because both the decision makers and others involved are products of their environment. Needed are decisions made from competitor or customer perspectives and an implementation structure created by a by a team using external professionals.
We use the above approach to revitalize R&D and its contribution to a company.
