Release High Tech R&D Talent Potential

LATEST THINKING

Research and development (R&D) organizations are the “crown jewels” of high tech businesses. Yet, amid digital consumers’ incessant demands for new products, high tech R&D appears to be losing some of its luster.

High tech innovation isn’t suffering from a lack of investment. It’s stumbling because today’s investments aren’t improving R&D’s organizational agility and output. It’s time for high tech companies to refuel their innovation agendas by using digital technologies and extended talent ecosystems to ensure R&D’s future workforce has the time and resources needed to develop the solutions that consumers now demand.

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KEY FINDINGS

Three main barriers stand between high tech R&D workforces and their innovation potential:

Inefficiencies. To free R&D workforces from mundane tasks, high tech companies have adopted innovation centers as a best practice. But even in innovation centers, engineers spend 30 percent of their time on non-value-added activities.

Closed innovation. By not capturing outside ideas and expertise, many high tech companies miss out on opportunities to innovate and prepare for digital disruption. Ninety-five percent of companies that consider themselves “disruption-ready” have established collaborative R&D environments. More important, 96 percent of disruption-ready companies that collaborate report improved R&D performance.

Digital immaturity. Most R&D organizations are not yet taking full advantage of what digital brings to the innovation table. For example, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) produces a 43 percent increase in employees’ ability to focus on more valuable work. High tech companies that don’t apply new technologies like RPA will be left behind.