Assessment of quality and maturity level of R&D

The strategic importance of R&D will be emphasised even more in the future. Continuous improvement of the effectiveness of R&D requires an adequate and comprehensive assessment and measurement system. The present method, the quality and maturity method (QMM), for assessing the quality and maturity of R&D examines R&D from six viewpoints: R&D as part of business strategy; R&D as part of product and technology strategy; strategic implementation of R&D; R&D as a business section; R&D outputs; and implementation of R&D projects. Procedures in each of the six viewpoints are assessed and scored by 5 maturity levels. The QMM method has been lightly piloted in about 50 companies, which have had development projects in Finnish national technology programs. The verifying of the preliminary QMM method in four pilot-companies has shown that the viewpoints used in the assessment describe factors pertaining to the quality and maturity of R&D quite well, and they indicate central development needs. Development needs mainly concentrate on the development of procedure definitions and/or the development of practical implementation based on existing definitions. The deeper piloting of the method is under way or will begin in six companies and two research institutes. Future research will test the applicability of the method to different types of companies and analyse the background variables (such as the nature of R&D in organisation). The real challenge in improving the effectiveness of R&D is linking the project-level R&D objective to company-level business strategies. Effectively collected feedback information from R&D projects should be utilised in strategic planning, and the desired objectives for R&D should be defined clearly in the strategies.