مدیریت توسعه "پروژه تحقیق و توسعه" مشارکتی از یک ابزار مدیریت عملی

In an environment of globalisation, intense competition and rising R&D costs, collaboration has become an essential means of sustaining technological growth. However, there are many difficulties inherent in managing projects across organisational boundaries. While research has identified a range of management “success” factors, little attention has been given to how such knowledge could be applied in the everyday context of a collaborative project. Based on case studies by the authors involving the automotive and aerospace industries, this paper reports on the development of a management tool designed to provide practical guidance on the effective management of collaborative R&D projects.

Against a background of increasing international competition and rapid technological change, the UK government has, since the 1980s, been actively encouraging collaboration between academia and industry, as a means of improving innovation efficiency and thereby enhancing wealth creation [1]. However, collaborations between often diverse organisations are difficult to manage [2] and the cultural differences between academia and industry present particular difficulties [3]. Thus, the contrast between an increasing prevalence of university–industry collaborative R&D projects and equally prevalent reports of failure, has driven considerable research in the identification of management “success” factors [3] and [4]. However, very little work has been done pertaining to how this knowledge could be applied in practice, to bring about improvements in collaboration management. This paper reports on the development of a framework for the effective management of collaborative R&D projects, based on both this extensive body of knowledge and case study work. The framework tool is then tested through a further case study involving the food and drink industry.

Whilst considerable research has been devoted to identifying management “success” factors for collaborative projects, to date the literature provides no guidance as to how the full range of these success factors could be applied in the every day context of managing a collaboration. The framework, a management tool for practitioners developed on the basis of case studies and published research, aims to fill this gap. The framework encourages an awareness of the key issues affecting the success of collaborations and prompts the manager to take appropriate and timely action to prevent problems before they arise. Evaluation of the tool demonstrated some preliminary support for its ability to predict weaknesses and potential risks, thus enabling effective mitigating action to be taken by the project team. Developed initially for use in automotive and aerospace R&D projects, implementation in the food and drink industry indicates that it is more widely applicable. In addition, the work provided important additional insights into the dynamics of collaborative R&D projects, most notably that strong collaboration is based on strong personal as well as organizational relationships. Related to this is the conclusion that the collaboration champion should be treated as a higher-level factor within the framework, in recognition of the influence it has been shown to exert on the dynamics of collaboration.