What it is, when it makes sense
In the last decade growth in Asia and M&A activities have been the most important growth drivers. However, normalization in Asia and high price levels for chemical companies increases the need for new products and applications and for an effective and efficient R&D.
Therefore many chemical companies put more attention towards their R&D departments and strive to increase their Return-on-Innovation.
Since the ‘white spots’ for product and application innovations are limited R&D excellence initiatives are highly challenging. Our R&D excellence approach contains the experience of 300+ innovation benchmarkings and R&D projects in the chemical industry and will bring your R&D engine to the next level building the fundament for delivering new products and applications.
What you get
The scope of our “R&D excellence” approach contains multiple dimensions:
- R&D strategy
- R&D project portfolio
- R&D process (e.g. stage gate)
- Project management (conventional & agile)
- R&D organization (internal & open innovation)
- R&D competencies
- R&D performance measurement
Our typical full “R&D excellence” engagement delivers three items:
- R&D diagnostics including innovation benchmarking and map of opportunities: comparison with peers from the chemical industry of key performance indicators (such as new product sales, new product profitability, time to market, etc.) as well as functional practices in R&D and organization models adopted, with the identification of strengths and weak points. The results of the diagnostic phase are consolidated in a map of opportunities.
- R&D target model: In close cooperation with the client the map of opportunities is developed to the R&D target model. In this phase the R&D strategy will be derived based on the overall business strategy. The result of this phase is the decision proposal including implementation plan and business case for the approval in the management team / board.
- Implementation of R&D target model: During the implementation we typically support the project management and ensure that the project keeps its pace. Furthermore we support specific activities like building up the project portfolio management or applying agile approaches to speed up development projects. We will also take care for the change management.
The “R&D excellence” program typically focuses on all levers (strategy, project portfolio,…) but can also be scoped to only a subset of levers.
How we work
The engagement duration varies in relation to the size of organization, scope and agility of approach usually between 6 and 18 months. We often organize our projects in phases – or „waves“ – addressing one-three categories / regions in each wave. The staff is tailored to ensure the right competences are on-board, typically:
- One senior project manager with experience in chemical R&D
- One-four experts in chemical R&D management
- One project management office (PMO) support – in some cases the role is carried out by the senior project manager.