At the front end of the R&D/Innovation process: idea development and entrepreneurship

This paper deals with the 'front end' of the RD the decision imperatives and constraints under which they operate; the potential for increased cooperation in idea generation; and the increasing trend for firms to look outside the firm for ideas and technology. Factors which are having significant impacts on the idea generation process in the firm include: outsourcing, corporate restructuring, letting competitors take the innovation lead, making the firm 'lean and mean' and decentralization into even smaller and more narrowly–focused business units which cannot or will not support the kind of research that generates or develops more radical ideas for new products, processes and services.

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