CASE ANALYSIS: RESEARCH STRATEGY AND BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
If all companies in the United States (and, for that matter, in the rest of the world) followed one of the three research strategies described in this case, precious little research would ever be performed in a market economy. The first strategy, that of company Able posits a high risk approach of selecting one probable marketable concept from among those produced by pure research activities in universities, and devoting significant research effort to that concept.
This strategy is high risk for three reasons. First, not all concepts emanating from university research laboratories are amenable to market application development. If such a selection is not amenable to market application development, the company has no other on going research projects to provide new products. Second, the strategic policy of pouring all of a firm's research funds into a single project until a product is either on the market, or until it is determined that the concept is not amenable to market application development effectively limits a firm's research efforts to the attempted development of one new concept every decade or two. In such a circumstance, a failure to successfully exploit a selected concept leaves a firm totally reliant on products produced from research that is, at a minimum, ten years old. Third, company Able performs no primary research on its own. It relies entirely on pure research concepts emanating from universities. In the United States, universities, in turn, are heavily reliant on government to provide the funds necessary to conduct pure research. In many instances, these funds are dependent upon the universities being able to demonstrate that planned research is to some extent related to national defense objectives. Defense related research cannot be relied upon to always be amenable to market application development. In the post Cold War environment, the...