There was an interesting article posted on the Canadian Business website yesterday about the Xerox corporation, and their continued dedication to R&D efforts despite the fact that they’ve had to make cutbacks everywhere else:
The company is freezing salaries and suspending contributions to retirement plans as part of about US$550 million in cost savings. But R&D? Untouchable. It is Xerox’s lifeblood, says chief technology officer Sophie Vandebroek:
“Easily 75% of our new product sales are things that R&D launched in the last three years” Vandebroek says. “If you stand still, you get commoditized.”
Source
How does Xerox do their R&D these days? As well as their regular R&D team, they work with customers to discover what customers think of potential products, as well as what these customers really want. They determine how customers use their products in their daily lives. And this has helped Xerox avoid another incident like the disaster of the mouse and GUI (graphical user interface): Xerox’s team had developed these two items, but never sold them commercially as Xerox didn’t believe that they would have a market. Other computer companies, after seeing the technologies themselves, then put it the technologies to work and did attempt to sell the computers commercially – and very successfully, at that.
Xerox continues to spend 5% of it’s revenue on R&D every year.
Bottom line? Never forget how important R&D can be. It is what drives your company forward, what allows you to continually offer products that your customers want.
Worried about the cost of R&D for your company? In Canada, the federal government provides tax refunds and credits for companies that perform R&D; most provincial governments also provide incentives for performing R&D.