BJÖRN AXLING

Björn Axling Is a Manager at Arthur D. Little’s Gothenburg office and member of the Technology Innovation Management Practice.

Creating the Optimal R&D Organization

Driven by the need to respond to global hyper-competition and the increasing clock speed of technological change, companies are relying heavily on their R&D functions to accelerate innovation while maintaining tight budgets. However, organizational structures for R&D in large international companies are often sub-optimal and act as a major barrier to performance improvement. In order to successfully optimize R&D’s contribution to business value, companies need to address the three key dimensions of structure, governance and process. From our extensive work with the R&D functions of leading global companies, we have identified eight imperatives to ensure a successful transformation across these dimensions.

The Future of Medtech – Applying the Power of Innovation

The share of profits from new products is particularly high in medtech compared to other industries; and Arthur D. Little’s recent global Innovation Excellence study demonstrates that a high performance innovation system generates significant and quantifiable effects on profitability and accelerated time to market for new product development. This viewpoint outlines the future of the medtech industry and its opportunities as well as how to address the challenges through implementation of a well-designed Innovation Management System.