Team collaboration in multinational R&D projects

The nature and process of R&D has changed considerably with the globalization of our business environment, often requiring the integration of large sets of activities and sub-systems across geographically dispersed areas and countries. Collaboration among the various work teams, support groups and stakeholders has become a critical success factor, especially for complex multinational developments where project leaders have to work across organizational lines with limited managerial power in terms of conventional authority, command and control. This is a difficult task which requires a level of leadership beyond regular project management skill to unify, focus and synchronize the R&D effort. Yet, some R&D project leaders seem to be able to achieve higher levels of collaboration than others. This paper reports the results of a field study examining barriers to collaboration and leadership challenges in complex and technology-intensive product R&D efforts. The paper discusses the leadership challenges, managerial actions, organizational conditions and work processes that foster collaboration in complex and culturally diverse R&D team environments.