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What is the R&D Approach?
Is the concept of ‘research and development’ always appropriate to community
interests? To answer this question, we may first consider Godin’s
4
description of how ‘D’
was added to ‘R’ to make ‘R&D’. A short study of this history indicates that, over a period of
70 years, three distinct relationships (phases) between research and development can
be defined, and these have incidentally redefined the word ‘development’.
This Harvard Business School work classifies the first phase of ‘development’ as a list of
activities, which in the second phase became a ‘development’ subcategory of research in the same
manner as basic and applied research. The third phase raised ‘development’ to be a separate category
at the same level as research in the term now used – R&D. Most of this evolution occurred in
USA industry, from which official research surveys adopted the language and it automatically
was then used in government objectives of accessing military contractors for defense research.
This led Anthony
5
to codify research as:
1. Uncommitted research, which is planned in order to reveal new knowledge that
may be unrelated to a specific application.
2. Applied research, which applies ‘existing knowledge to problems involved in the
creation of a new product or process, including work required to evaluate possible uses’.
3. Development, which applies ‘existing knowledge to problems involved in the
improvement of a present product or process’ – development includes ‘scale activity, pilot plants
and design’ but not ‘market and economic or social research, legal work, technical services,
or production’.
By the 1960s, these general categories had spread to other OECD countries after they
had been refined by the USA emergence from the 1930s depression when social sciences
were included. The OECD codified research through its ‘Frascati Manual’
6
categories of
‘fundamental’, ‘applied’ and ‘development’. Research was then defined as ‘creative work
undertaken on a systematic basis to increase the stock of scientific and technical knowledge
and to use this stock of knowledge to devise new applications’.
7
4
Benoît Godin (2006) Concept of R&D. Research and Development: how the ‘D’ got into R&D. Science
and Public Policy 33 (1): 59-76
5
Anthony, R.N. (1951) Selected Operating Data: Industrial Research Laboratories, Boston MA.
Harvard Business School, Division of Research.
6
OECD (1962) The Measurement of Scientific and Technical Activities: Proposed Standard Practice
for Surveys of Research and Development. Paris.
7
OECD (1962) The Measurement of Scientific and Technical Activities: Proposed Standard Practice
for Surveys of Research and Experimental Development. Paris.
