Research & Development
“If I asked them what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” – Henry Ford
So is the case in business and data. If you ask your team(s) what they want, they will respond with ways to make the current solution marginally better. Businesses will always default to incremental improvements in current processes and call it “Innovation”. While improvements are needed, true Innovation has the opportunity to propel the company for years and decades to come. It is very hard and takes a different kind of thinking.
This is where Contemporary Analysis (CAN) can help. Innovation, also called Research and Development, is a cornerstone of how we help companies become data-driven. To date, we have helped 100+ companies innovate by setting up their company to be data-driven.
Many times the answers to where the company needs to go has been in the data the whole time. However, companies rarely have the expertise to access it. CAN is designed to be that expertise–to help look into your data and find those business-changing ideas.
Signs you should hire CAN for R&D:
- “We’ve always done it this way.” if you bring an idea to your data/tech team and this is the response you will experience significant drag on deployment.
- “It can’t be done.” This is a sign of someone who is comfortable with the status quo. If the response included “…but I’ll see what can.” you’ve got the needed mindset.
- “We’re too busy.” This indicates your team is stretched to capacity. Whether perceived capacity or actual capacity is irrelevant. Adding R&D to this team will degrade current production.
- “Can your department…” if you have to ask another department to prioritize your innovation you are dependent on their workload and time frame(s). This is also a sign of a company that may be too segmented to develop cross segment innovation.
- “We’ll work it into next year’s budget” this is an easy way to table innovation until it is absolutely mission critical. Working within a budget is important but statements like this push the problem down the road a few more months. If your need to innovate is urgent, its time to call CAN.
There are numerous other signs and obstacles you will encounter when trying to innovate.
“I shall find a way or I will make one.” – Hannibal
CAN takes that quote to heart. Especially when it relates to R&D work. So much so that we also offer the ability to jointly own a solution. See our jointly owned IP software solutions for more info.
