IRI2038 Completes Discovery Phase 

IRI2038 reaches its first  major milestone with the completion of the Discovery Phase including:

• Futures Audit
• Weak Signal Environmental Scan
• Retrospective RTM review

The Futures Audit was conducted to establish a current view of the future based on beliefs of R&D leaders today. The IRI2038 team interviewed 38 R&D executives and other thought leaders from around the world to learn what they considered to be the main drivers of change in R&D management, past, present and future.  26 of these were mentioned in at least 10% of the interviews. Participants also highlighted ten key past drivers of change and 25 changes or trends they are experiencing today.

Here are the top 10 drivers of past, present and future change in R&D management as described in our Futures Audit interviews.

 Globalization of R&D  * Open Innovation The Internet * Increased Regulation *  Computation * Fear of Science  *

Video Conferencing  *  Miniaturization *  Big Data Analysis * From Transformational to Incremental 

More Rigorous Connection of R&D to Business Strategy & Customer Needs *   Project Speed Increasing  *

Virtual Work & Labs  *  Automation  *  Collaboration * Global Climate Change/Sustainability * Simulation  *

Challenges to IP Protection * F2F still Required? * Robotics * 

Employee Mobility  * Resource Scarcity

The Weak Signals Environmental Scan 

The Weak Signals Environmental Scan was conducted, with the help of Foresight Alliance, to identify early signals of possible future trends that were "off the radar" of the consensus view established in the Futures Audit. It is the interaction of weak signals future projections with the key drivers above that will inform the scenarios to be developed next year.

Over 20 weak signals were identified and clustered using the VERGE categories of Create, Consume, Connect, Define and Relate as shown below. To see all the scan hits behind these results, check out the complete Weak Signals Report.

The RTM Retrospective 

The Retrospective look back through 25 years of RTM journal feature articles is also complete. This will be reported in detail next month and remain a "work in progress" through 2013.