Can R&D management be strengthened through certification?
The International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management had an interesting article Evaluating R&D management systems: strengths and weaknesses of universities and government-funded research institutes:
This study was conducted to determine relative areas of improvement in R&D management systems for universities and research institutes in the Republic of Korea. The research was motivated partly by recent efforts of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Republic of Korea to strengthen the management system of R&D accounts in order to promote efficiency and best practices in handling R&D budgeting and account matters.
CMMI has a guide (and certification) for R&D management. I am not sure how widely this certification is adopted. I am also unsure of the value of this certification because of the breadth of processes and tools it covers. The guide covers the entire practice of requirements management (systems engineering) is in three pages. I understand CMMI’s value in a single discipline development environment such as software development. I am unsure of the value of certification for R&D management in physical systems with long development cycles and complex interdependencies.. Korean government clearly so value in the idea:
To this end, MOST introduced a binding certification system that is able to evaluate the ability and skill of government-funded national research institutes and universities under its jurisdiction to manage R&D accounts. The certification system is based on a set of criteria, broken down into 3 categories and 27 subcategories. This study analyses and compares the government-funded research institutes and major universities applying for the certification of R&D accounts, based on all the categories.
The overall conclusion is intuitive: Pure research institutes were better at management processes, while universities tended to capture information better.
This study shows that the research institutes boast comparatively better systems for self-audit, the precontrol of R&D accounts, the R&D management organisation, the perfection of R&D management manuals and the items of trial production cost and travel expenditures. On the other hand, the universities are better organised in such aspects as the computerisation of R&D management and the database maintenance of R&D accounts.