Planning Industrial R&D Projects

Intro (from Linkedin Post)

There are several profound - but usually neglected - paradigm shifts between academic and industrial research. Those two road signs below point out one of them: When a scientist gets trained in academia, research work starts with a defined starting point for the assigned research project. The end point is variable and important is robustness and novelty.

After becoming a scientist in industry, research work starts with a defined endpoint - the Needed Outcome of a project, a product, etc. The starting point and novelty are not important and no independent peer review validates the robustness of work and results anymore.

Academic science trained us with a defined starting point in mind.?

Industrial R&D provides us with a defined endpoint - the product!

The key to excellence in industrial R&D

This paradigm shift from "defined starting point" to "defined end point" brings many novel opportunities to make success with research projects fast, predictable and repeatable - but often it is not taken advantage of.

This article: Three Phases of Project Planning

When a research project has a defined Starting and Endpoint, scientific skills and creativity can be applied to finding the fastest, most reliable approach to that Needed Project Outcome.?

Save millions by avoiding roadblocks and pivots

Most roadblocks and pivots can be avoided, simply by asking questions such as the ones below:

What are likely artifacts? How can those be detected?

What similar work has succeeded before, and what were lessons learned?

What does existing evidence tell us about the likeliness of success of our approach?

Not possible in organically grown organizations

However, organically grown structure and processes make this nearly impossible to do - because those questions are extra upfront work at a time when they do not have an immediately obvious necessity but are rather an obvious obstacle to "getting results quickly and showing progress". And too many other tasks do have a formal priority.

A simple framework to put important questions on the map

What is critical to reliably benefit from this is having a simple framework that puts such questions on the map.

I have seen millions of dollars being wasted by easily avoidable blunders that have "slipped through" due to no - or more frequently - an insufficiently set up framework.?

Everyone of course says: "Oh, we are doing that already!"?

If this is overoptimistic or reality is easy to find out: There are very clear markers to validate if the framework really is effective, or if it only looks as if it was.

Validate the actual functionality of R&D planning

Mapping out EVERY task needed to get from a project Starting to the Needed Endpoint is easily doable and avoids most roadblocks and pivots that hold back industrial research. We are just not used to doing this - because we are all trained in academia where this is NOT possible.

Phase 1 defines the Starting and End points of your R&D Project

Most industrial research projects enable this: Write down a list of items that need to come out of the project and show that list around to align everyone and the same exact goals, outcomes, etc. This way, at least the Endpoint is nailed down and validated - and that is the most important thing!

Validation Tests for Phase 1:?

1. Look at this list! Does it exist??

2. Is there ONE central version of this list? If several, redundant versions exist, a lot of the benefit is lost.

3. Has EVERY stakeholder read it, and signed off on it??

4. Does every bit of practical work explicitly refer to this one central list? If not, there will be a disconnect between high-level plans, and the actual executed R&D work.

Phase 2 maps out ALL tasks needed to get from that Starting to the Endpoint

This of course provides only the "best-case scenario", but if even that has to rely on tasks that are predictably very unlikely to succeed, then you are headed for roadblocks and pivots, and modifying the approach is needed to make those problematic tasks more likely to succeed.?

Validation Tests for Phase 2:

1. Are ALL tasks directly connected to the immediately preceding and the succeeding tasks? Any disconnect and gap are likely to conceal an upcoming roadblock.?

2. Are connections unidirectional to represent the actual flow of work? Circular arrows mean gaps and hidden problems.?

3. Are all tasks on that map "Mutually Exclusive and Comprehensively Exhaustive"? (Read up this principle here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECE_principle)

Phase 3 uses literature to show the feasibility of each single task!

If you "know your way around the topic you are working on", then you already have a good idea about relevant literature or actual, in-house data that supports the approach and decisions. And if you have written academic research grants before, you already have practice to "upfront demonstrate the feasibility of specific research work by using existing literature and evidence".?

This will only take maybe an hour per task because it is not a repetition of the academic NIH R01 grant writing trauma: The sole purpose of Phase 3 is to show "realistic feasibility", and not to outcompete hundreds of competing well-written R01 grants.

Validation Tests for Phase 3:

1. Is it justified to claim the feasibility of every needed task on the map??

2. Are the justifications robust? Do they make sense to others, too??

Ask other, non-involved scientists to look at your justification of feasibility - our mind is less likely to be affected by common biases such as over-optimism when we have to write it down in a comprehensible manner. But it needs to "make sense".

"Ready" means "objective evidence shows it is likely to succeed"

When all validation questions are positive, then there is objective evidence for every single task to be realistic.?

But if a project plan misses one or more validation questions, it is "NOT ready", and you simply add a bit more work to achieve the missing ones. And while you are doing that, you will uncover many problems, of which most - if left in place - had led to roadblocks and pivots.

What it takes to make this work

This approach does work, but it requires several, simple conditions to be in place. I am happy to walk you through those, just message me.?

Below, I discuss a few of the typical "killers" that need to be avoided.

The same as solving Rubrik's Cube: very fast with efficient processes and practice?

Applying those phases has turned around companies that were draining their runway into easily preventable roadblocks and pivots!

But doing this efficiently and reliably takes many things. One of those is practice.?

Another is to have access to simple, out-of-the-box functional processes - because some aspects of this are very different from what scientists were trained for, as explained above and in previous posts: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/axel-bethke-3994805_a-better-way-to-plan-industrial-rd-projects-activity-7151647783232430081-_4qN?

And the LeanRnD framework provides those: https://www.ueberblickservices.com/how-it-works

This was "Killer #1"

"We have not been able to do this!" does NOT mean "This is impossible"

Most of us will strongly believe that this is not possible or will take too long - simply because humans reject anything that conflicts with their past experience. This is sometimes called aliablility heuristics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic). So, if you have not applied these three phases before while using simple and effective processes, you are hardwired to think:?

"This is impossible!"?

But if we correct this statement by removing the availability heuristics, it would be this:

"What we have tried before has not worked."?

This was "Killer #2".

Path of least resistance

A common excuse to avoid going through those three phases is "I don't think I need to do this at this point".?

Which is nothing else than "kicking the can down the road". This is made very tempting because there are too many other, daily operations-related tasks that are all prioritized more obviously necessary than those three project planning phases.?

But NOT doing this work now leads to - half a year of work in that direction later - trying to finally plan that task-in-question and finding out that it actually is NOT feasible - so that the entire approach needs to be abandoned.?

And that insight usually was predictable already before starting - simply by asking those questions upfront!

This was "Killer #3"

Not "extra" work

Do not be fooled - this is not "extra" work, because: "No matter what, if that task is part of the best case scenario, you WILL have to solve it if you ever want to exit the project."?

And with an efficient process and practice, the project planning phases deliver it within a few hours of work.?

Increase your own success by applying this

There are many more aspects that are important for those phases to work - but none of those is complicated. It is similar to Lean Six Sigma - many simple measures, but the coverage that their combination offers is what brings the true value.

Reach out to me if you want to find out more, or how to apply this to your own operations.

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