The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

8.4. Corporate Research Laboratory and Corporate Business Development Group

Both the corporate research laboratory (CRL) and business development group fall into this area. The CRL's traditional mission has been to develop and prove the feasibility of high-risk exploratory research that would have significant benefit to the corporation. Traditionally, these units were relatively independent of the SBUs—being funded through a corporate tax and free to pursue high-risk technologies. However, considerable reorganization in most CRL's occurred during the latter part of the 1990s, when firms placed more emphasis on them to produce bottom line results. Most companies increased the SBU "...focused level of funding from between 30-50 percent to up to 70-80 percent..." (Glass et al., 2003:25). This has resulted in a much stronger alignment of the CRL with the SBU.

NOTE

Corporate research laboratories (CRL) typically have projects that are jointly funded by both the corporation and the strategic business unit (SBU). To achieve success a relationship manager, reporting directly to the head of the CRL, is often utilized to foster effective collaboration between the CRL and SBU.

Several organizational structures designed to achieve better SBU alignment are being utilized. The relationship manager and individual initiative model are discussed in a recent article by Glass et al. (2003). The relationship manager reports directly to the head of the CRL. This person's responsibility is to focus ...