National Development Plan
It seems uncharitable to carp about such an extraordinary investment in the future of the country but I cannot help but look the proverbial gift horse of the NDP in the mouth.
In the race to invest in R&D it seems that we are forgetting one critical constituent; the user.
Much of the NDP builds on the foundations of the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation, an important but dull document. In so doing it focuses quite rightly on the importance of R&D, but as we have observed before, investment in R&D is not sufficient in itself. You need to find ways of making sure that the investment is commercialised in the best way.
Both documents continue to create a technocracy that ignores the user, the human element. Not a short term problem, but it will have an impact on our competitiveness in the long run if we cannot turn world-class R&D into attractive, desirable products and services.
February 12th, 2007 at 11:42 am
These sentiments are echoed within the Business Week article, Beware the Innovation Trap. As we have espoused, part of innovation is certainly coming up with the best user-focused ideas, and the second talent is selecting the right ideas. As related in the article, the same processes and metrics used for existing products are typically not applicable to creating and tracking innovative products.
The article offers up at least one solution in the form of a new book, Payback, that plots investment, speed to market and return to help companies abandon high-investment, low-return projects quickly.