How Matsushita Electric and Sony Manage Global R&D

OVERVIEW:As companies transfer their R&D activities abroad, they will have to confront a challenging management issue: how to successfully operate R&D laboratories dispersed around the world. Both Matsushita Electric and Sony seem to have coped with this issue skillfully by introducing new management systems and practices—redefining the mission and goals of their global R&D, assigning two types of projects at the same time, rather than specializing projects among different labs, coordinating not by large-scale committees or meetings but through human relationships among a small number of top R&D managers, drastically changing their organizational structures, and so on. It appears that both companies have already realized some of the anticipated benefits.