Measuring R&D productivity: complementing the picture by focusing on research activities

Abstract To stay competitive in an ever-changing environment, companies have to continuously increase the productivity of their R&D resources. To make this increase in productivity possible, the productivity must be measured. Most research so far has focused on measuring R&D as a whole, but with relatively little success. The conclusions drawn from this paper are that previous research has failed due to two main problems. Firstly, esearch activities differ from development activities regarding a number of factors, factors that play important roles in measuring productivity. Thus, research activities must be measured separately, to ensure that the factors are correctly considered. Secondly, the view of what the expected output from a company’s research activities is varies from company to company, as well as with external factors like changing customer demands and developments in the market. Thus, to measure the research activity, managers first have to define what the expected output from the research activities is and then adopt a measurement system that fits the current situation.