research and development team

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There are many considerations in building a good R&D team. Questions like “how to do R&D for business?”, “Where do I hire R and D staffing?”, “What R and D services can I establish on my own?”, “Do I need to build an R and D building or several R&D centers?” may come up. To set up a good R&D team at affordable research and development costs , you need to:

• Understand what you can and cannot do on your own
• Know the R&D team structure you need
• How to implement research and development
• Consider R and D staffing offshore nearshore options

How to Structure a Research and Development Company

Determining how to structure a Research and Development (R&D) company and corresponding r&d centers is not easy and has several considerations. However, there are 2 general R&D team structure frameworks that most businesses and organizations use as a guide. The structure that you use should fit your business structure and R&D needs.

Separate Functional Form

R&D departments  manage R&D team and experts capable of executing the entire product development process for the individual department R&D project. This structure requires R and D teams with high levels of collaboration and expertise in the entire product development process for their assigned department to effectively function.

Product Line Form

For the second structure, each step in the R&D product development or improvement project is handled by separate departments. This enables businesses to outsource certain steps or functions in the R&D product development or improvement to third-party R&D service providers.

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How to Implement Research and Development and Build Good R&D Team

Think Big, and Plan Accordingly

Think globally, act locally. This means that implementing a good R&D team needs a global overarching vision with a corresponding action plan for acting locally. A good R&D team needs structures and processes that will be effective in developing and/or improving products for diverse markets, whether it be local or global.

Cultivate Problem Solving Approach and Business Awareness

Successful products developed or improved by the engineering R & D team are launched in future business strategies. The management team should plan for the impact of key industry drivers when making any decision.

It is also essential that R&D focuses on addressing consumer feedback and meeting consumer needs. This approach ensures that products developed by the engineering R & D team are relevant to the consumer base and adds value to the business.

Businesses should be able to plan, monitor, and adapt as technology evolves and grow. This will ensure that they can utilize new technology to improve their products or develop new products that meet consumer needs. This will also help keep the business relevant and continuously grow.

Clearly Define Goals and Objectives

Be strategic and in your decision making and distinguish your goals and objectives appropriately according to the level needed. Consider the company’s overall strategic vision and goals and integrate other internal and external insights and information in developing long-range business and R&D plans. 

Ensure that R&D plans and projects align with the company’s overall goals and business strategies. This ensures that the R&D team and its projects add value to the business and influence and enhance the business strategy. Define SMART goals and objectives. Ensure that the R&D team and strategic goals and objectives are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This ensures that your goals are clear and can be realized by the department.

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Integrate R and D Team in Cross-Functional Strategizing

R&D is not an isolated department but is part of a network of departments that support a business. The business must establish a shared viewpoint and understanding of its R&D portfolio and R&D centers. Everyone is now on the same page regarding the goals and objectives of the engineering R & D team. This also collectively builds commitment to the successful execution of their projects.

Include representatives and experts from different functions (R&D, manufacturing, sales, marketing, consumer assistance) when planning for R&D strategies or projects. This approach will help build and maintain the commitment to research of every department involved.

Establish and Maintain the Product Pipeline

Ensure that their R&D team and R&D centers have a smooth, consistent, and reliable flow of products and improvements. This reduces the risk of delays, overcharging, failed product launches, and problematic products. This shows that your R&D team is reliable, efficient, and effective in its workflow.

A streamlined product pipeline also helps balance the short-term and long-term interests and the technology strategy of the business. Over time, streamlining processes will help added value to the company.

Balance Focus with Experimentation

A successful R&D team can find the balance between core idea focus and experimentation. Experimentation allows for ideation and discovery of innovation; the eureka! moments that many aims for in R&D. On the flip side, focusing too much on core ideas can also lead to missed opportunities and stagnation. R&D cannot afford to focus resources more on exploration than idea development, or vice versa. A business should have a healthy balance of idea exploration and a focus on core ideas. 

A good R&D team should also strive for a balance between R&D projects with incremental product improvements and projects with potential for significant breakthroughs. This will lead to more sustainable R&D and business success. Always put focus and effort on projects that create value for the business.

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Evaluate R&D Project Quantitatively

Evaluating projects quantitatively ensure equitable or unbiased assessment of R&D projects. This ensures that there is transparency among individuals and business representatives involved. Quantitative evaluations measure the impact R&D project outputs on the business overall against their initial expected value at the start.

Quantitative evaluation of your R&D is also part of measuring its effectiveness. The effectiveness of an R and D team also factors in the efficiency of the departmental processes, product or improvement turnaround time, valuation of project output, cost-effectiveness, the achievement of set goals, and others.

Empower Members of R&D Team

A good R&D team is one that hires the professional best fit with the business needs and can provide them with opportunities for further professional growth and development. Creating a learning framework – individual and organizational learning – for your R&D team ensures that there is continuous learning among your R&D team. The learning framework can also incorporate measures to enable learning from other businesses and R&D organizations, as well as organizational post-product evaluations and audits.

5 Reasons to Have a Strong R&D Team

In the present-day cutthroat business environment, being innovative is crucial to maintaining an edge in the market. Thriving companies recognize the need to continually create new products and services that cater to the ever-changing demands of their customers. Consequently, having a sturdy RnD team is essential, even for smaller organizations. Here are five persuasive grounds why you should channel resources into powerful R&D teams:

• Competition: To differentiate yourself in your industry, you must be innovative. An effective R and D center team ensures that you are always ahead of the game by delivering fresh and stimulating products that distinguish you from your competitors.
• Risk Minimization: A proficient R and department team can aid you in determining which products or services are worth investing in, saving you valuable resources. By conducting exhaustive research, they can ascertain whether there is a market demand for your next big idea before you commit to it.
• Independent Reviews: An RD team provides impartial evaluations of your products, giving you an accurate idea of their performance. This allows you to detect opportunities and make informed decisions before launching your products.
• Productivity: R&D teams also evaluate your business operations to discover more effective and cost-efficient ways of conducting business. This can help you save resources while enhancing productivity and profits.
• Marketing: RnD department teams can also assist you in marketing by proposing fresh and exciting ideas to reach your customers. By collaborating with your marketing team, they can help you develop targeted campaigns that resonate with your audience and drive sales.

Why a Good R&D Team is Crucial 

A great RD team makes a huge difference to a business. Not only does it help the business grow, but it also helps you stand out from your competition. Customers are not always loyal and they are always on the lookout for the next, bigger and better product they can use to fulfill their needs. R and D is the backbone of successful businesses around the globe and it is because it identifies customers’ needs before it becomes general knowledge.

There is a very good reason for multinational companies to spend 20% of their earnings on RD. It helps them stay ahead of the curve, and offer customers the most updated ideas before their competition!

RD not only allows a company to identify its customers’ needs but also helps with streamlining internal processes, which shows the bottom line at the end of the day.

Leading software companies around the globe are spending about 10 to 15% of their earnings on RandD to keep up with their competition. This does not just count for global corporations, R and D can be beneficial to small and medium businesses as well!

Calculating what you should spend on RD can be difficult, so it is wise to approach a consultant or outsourcing agency and ask them for assistance.

R n D is worth the spend and there is rarely a situation where you will find that the return on your spend is not worth it!

Outsourcing Research and Development (R&D): Where to Get Reliable R and D Services

A major cost-effective measure to establish R&D for your business is to outsource the entire process to an R&D service provider. An R&D service provider will be able to assist you with:

• Determining team size and structure
• Establish R&D strategy and plans
• R&D staffing recruitment and onboarding
• Guide on how to set up R&D lab or R and D facility
• R&D facility establishment

Partnering with an outsourcing R&D service provider will ensure that you can get the best possible Research and Development (R&D) facility and Research and Development teams that your business needs with minimal investment.

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Benefits of r&d.

• R&D in Ukraine: Why Establishing an R&D Lab in Ukraine Is So Beneficial for Foreign Companies
• Research and Development Costs: Definition, Examples and More
• R&D Consulting: How to Get Help in Developing R&D Solutions
• R&D Engineer: Where and How to Hire Top Tech Talent

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The present-focused, future-ready R&D organization

Across engineered industries, the explosion in software has increased product complexity by an order of magnitude. Along with rapidly evolving technologies, fast-changing consumer preferences, accelerated product cycles, and the practical realities of globalized operations and markets, R&D departments are under unprecedented strain. As product variation grows and product portfolios expand, updating existing products compounds the already heavy load R&D organizations bear.

Yet amid these 21st-century challenges, R&D units are still following 20th-century models of organization—models not designed for today’s need for speed and the expanding web of interdependencies among all of the moving parts. The traditional component-based approach to R&D is no longer sensible in an era when digital and electronic systems are so thoroughly integrated with hardware. Still many companies struggle to shift toward an approach that focuses more on the function the customer wants, rather than the components that make the desired function work.

There is no one right way to organize R&D. But there are certain fundamentals that can help R&D organizations in advanced industries act more responsively and meet the burgeoning challenges they face today. From our work with clients and our extensive research, we’ve distilled a set of core design principles for R&D organizations and identified the important ones. By following these principles, companies can help their R&D organization serve as engines of innovation for outpacing competitors. And they can foster the agility organizations need in supporting collaboration among remote, distributed teams—as has become more important than ever in response to unpredictable external events.

A growing mismatch between design and function

Determining the right structure for the R&D organization has never been easy. The division of responsibility is a balancing act between the project-management organization and the R&D line organization, with inevitable trade–offs. Today’s R&D teams don’t have the luxury of following a sequential, piece-by-piece approach in which finished, designed components are handed off to testing at the end. Moreover, the teams need to be appropriately protected from the external and internal disruptions that the broader organization experiences, which today come with greater frequency.

As they’ve grown organically, many R&D organizations continue to operate with the same structures and processes they’ve used for years. Despite (or perhaps because of) the increasing inadequacy of those structures and processes, organizations don’t follow them consistently. Pet projects are often hard to kill, even long after their diminished promise becomes apparent. And because research effectiveness is hard to measure—and companies often don’t understand R&D costs or ways of working—the black-box image persists without challenge.

Thus, adhering to an existing structure isn’t enough: the shifting demands, the sheer volume of work and the growing complexity (much of it the result of software integration) make it incumbent on R&D organizations to reappraise their design. Instead, they can create new mechanisms to provide the coordination, transparency, governance, and risk protection R&D needs in the digital era.

A set of winning design principles

In the ideal R&D organization, responsibilities are clearly established, and interfaces between and among teams (internal and external) are seamless and transparent. These requirements, although not new, have become even more important of late, particularly when more teams are working remotely. R&D organizations that fulfill them can better meet further requirements—managing complexity actively and efficiently while staying focused on the future, and also maintaining the tools and capabilities for adapting to change.

Clearly delineate responsibilities for systems and end-to-end work

Historically, the R&D function has been organized according to field of expertise, components, or location, which has the effect of creating silos. Product properties are defined at the start of the development process, without being analyzed according to larger internal systems or user functions. Little attention is given to thinking in terms of the overarching goals customers want to achieve, or to the growing interdependencies as software and digital functions have pervaded almost every engineered product.

Many of the complications R&D organizations encounter today are the result of organizational interfaces that don’t match the product, along with a lack of transparency between groups. Take, for example, a feature such as lane-assistance for vehicles. Developing further advances in this function depends on a high level of coordination among teams developing steering systems, brake systems, and electrical systems. But too often that coordination occurs only late in design, perhaps even the final testing phase, by which point addressing problems becomes expensive and time-consuming. R&D organizations are more effective when they shift their orientation from components to user function, while keeping platform development stable to ensure a core of commonly used modules.

With such a shift, assigning end-to-end responsibility for functionality has become imperative. Companies can assign responsibility for the complete product, as well as for the individual system layers, under the “V” model shown in Exhibit 1, which imposes oversight as ideas progress from concept through to market release, series development, and finally upgrades.

The process moves from left to right. Under “Conception,” individual systems and their associated software are defined to fit customer demands and budget. Through early testing in the development process, issues and challenges become apparent early on. The right side of the V comprises testing and integration, which are conducted along the system layers. By breaking a product’s properties into requirements for systems and functions, the activities become transparent to everyone involved in development.

This approach enables iterative handshakes—more frequent interactions between concept owners and developers. Teams work together to translate properties into functional requirements. The approach also establishes dedicated responsibilities for complex functions and keeps the development process transparent. To coordinate and manage the interaction points, automotive companies tend to introduce central units that manage the whole integration process along the different development steps. These departments can be seen as a “stable backbone” within a dynamic development process, which helps improve planning for milestones and facilitates early failure detection. One machinery company, for example, set up quarterly integration meetings to align on priorities; the one to two days team members spend planning together gets them aligned for the next quarter’s work.

Perhaps the biggest benefit to assigning end-to-end responsibility is that it enables R&D to manage the interfaces and different development cycles between hardware and software development. Functionality owners coordinate the development of complex and interdependent components and features, creating technical guidelines and specifications that support consistency. They effectively safeguard the implementation and validate that the solution fulfills its requirements over its entire lifecycle.

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Keep functional interfaces across work sites to a minimum.

Companies can most effectively conceive of interfaces in terms of R&D’s geographic footprint—a balance taking into account which activities are performed where, and how the locations must interact. Minimizing functional interfaces across multiple sites and avoiding duplication of similar work are both important as well. Furthermore, to be cost-effective, location design can identify best-cost country sourcing for repetitive tasks, keeping in mind end-to-end responsibilities.

Dividing projects up among sites is usually less ideal, as people who work together in the same place tend to work more efficiently: earlier research found that with each additional development site for a given software product, productivity fell by about 14 percent (Exhibit 2.) Just the difference between one site and three sites amounts to a 37 percent decline in productivity.

Minimizing the number of handovers between sites—and making those that remain as smooth as possible—also helps. Distance between sites is not what matters; without the right management practices, a site across the city can seem as distant to employees as one clear across the country. But virtual teams can be as efficient as co-located teams, as long as the tools supporting the virtual work are utilized properly, communication is adapted accordingly, and everyone can participate on an equal basis.

R&D leaders can consider future roles and competencies when thinking about the physical design of the department. Where should the development of next-generation products start? How could a transition to new products be built for sites currently focused on legacy products? How will cost and availability figure into the overall network structure? The answers form a long-term site strategy that can help avert a talent crunch.

The right footprint model also builds in a detailed understanding of local requirements, such as interactions with suppliers, local regulations, and internally, the interdependencies with other departments or components. The sophistication of the design work, and the degree of conceptual work that will be done in a particular location, will inform the kind of competencies and technologies that will be needed. For example, one white-goods manufacturer carried out almost all development in its home market, later building a few local development centers in key markets to help adjust the products for local preferences, such as for refrigerator and freezer sizes, configurations, and color schemes.

Synchronize software and hardware development

Complexity in all its forms has increased markedly—product variations alone have exploded over the past two to three decades, driven largely by the rise of embedded software and digital capabilities.

But R&D protocols often fail to account for the unique challenges of managing the development of integrated software and hardware. Software and hardware development follow different development cycles and require different approaches to project steering. And when digital features or components aren’t explicitly considered in milestone planning, integration problems and delays are almost inevitable.

As essential as synchronizing development may be, it isn’t easy. In automotive, for example, map software generally takes about a year to develop, with frequent updates, while apps or innovative vehicle-control features (such as autopilot) may be updated monthly, with ongoing development and improvement. Contrast these cycle times with the hardware that runs navigation systems (which take two to three years to design and build), vehicle platforms (about seven years in the making) and basic vehicle components, such as heating systems and airbags—mature components that typically have a 10-year lifespan.

With such wide disparities in cycle times, transparency becomes crucial. The lack of it is a problem not only in concept development, but in delaying product launches as well. For complex functions, such as lane assistance, R&D units may have limited ability to measure how mature the product really is. When changes are made, teams may therefore fail to assess the implications on other features currently in development. Beyond cost overruns, delays, and risks to product integrity, poorly managed complexity invariably leads to finger-pointing among system teams as well as conflict between R&D and the project-management team.

R&D organizations have two options for managing the complexities of synching software and hardware development.

• Embedding software development within existing departments. This approach promotes integrated development—but in practice, processes are often designed from a hardware point of view, and software complexity is not managed effectively.
• Keeping development separate but coordinated. With this arrangement, individual technology components don’t get short shrift. The onus is on leaders to establish synchronization points to identify potential conflicts that would require escalation to senior management.

The approach to take is generally determined by the nature of the product, as well as the organization’s experience with software—bearing in mind that complexity will likely grow. Increasingly, services are developed not only within the engineering department but also within IT, creating still more interfaces and responsibilities, with implications for organization design.

Strike a balance between old and new technologies

When it comes to developing new technologies, R&D managers have three choices: segregate them completely in a separate unit; include them in the R&D organization, but keep them separate; or integrate them fully into the core R&D organization (Exhibit 3).

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Segregating the current and new technologies has its advantages. Unfettered by standard processes, separated units are free to realize their full potential. The R&D organization keeps budgets separate and shields the new technology from the noise of existing projects.

But this option can be a hard sell to management, as creating a new unit can be costly, labor-intensive, and harder to absorb into the existing structure. Beyond the break-in time to adapt to existing products and processes, segregation also limits the broader organization’s ability to transfer capabilities and knowledge, particularly given that cutting-edge technologies call for special (at times rare) expertise and training time for employees.

Short of total separation, there are essentially two ways to include new technology development within the R&D organization. Integrating new technologies fully into the existing organization helps transfer knowledge, and lets the new part of the organization tap into existing capabilities and processes, all of which helps in reaching scale faster. However, in this arrangement, there are risks—new technologies could be prematurely quashed by senior management, or if developed according to current methodologies, could yield less-than-optimal results.

An R&D makeover to sustain market leadership

A global production-equipment manufacturer had long viewed its R&D organization as a crucial source of competitive advantage. But the company’s rapid growth and increasingly complex product portfolio meant that more products were being developed in parallel. That led to even greater specialization among engineers and more technical interdependencies across modules. As the number of engineers and management layers grew, so did the number and complexity of interfaces, threatening the company’s rapid growth.

Historically, R&D groups had been organized in two types of departments.

• System functions, which handled the functionalities that met system specs and customer requirements, such as for productivity and machine precision.
• Engineering functions, encompassing specialties such as electronics, mechanics, software, and environmental controls.

These functions were required for developing the system modules and the system architecture needed for the integrity of the assembled machine.

Cutting complexity

As a first step in redesigning the R&D organization, R&D leaders made system function leaders responsible for tangible and testable machine modules. System leaders’ reports were given responsibility for the respective submodules. In that way, every production module and submodule would have a clear owner with end-to-end responsibility, from new-product introduction to third-line field-service support. Whereas before, each engineer worked on multiple products, under the new system each now works on only one business line and handles only one submodule at a time (Exhibit).

System-function departments are now primarily business-line dedicated. Each system function has a central architecture team that promotes commonality in the system modules’ roadmaps and the maximum reuse of module elements among business lines.

Engineering-function teams (such as software teams) are largely dedicated to modules or submodules. Leaders have the authority to deliver their technical roadmap with more stable, focused, and experienced people. Within each engineering function is a central architecture department that’s responsible for system design and standards (the left side of the V in Exhibit 1 in the main text) and for setting guardrails for module design and development. This structure also ensures integrity in the final product.

Responsive and future-ready

To maintain system integrity, shared platforms, and innovation- and knowledge-sharing across business lines, the company established several central teams. To manage competence (and continue building needed skills), the organization developed a taxonomy of critical competencies, assigned to VPs and managers and governed through an annual planning cycle.

The stable, multidisciplinary teams that characterize the new design have created a solid foundation for piloting and scaling agile ways of working in the product development teams. Since the launch of the new organization, more than 2,000 engineers have migrated to agile methods. But engineers aren’t the only ones working in new ways. By forging and executing the redesign as a team, R&D leaders have developed adaptive muscle, with the ability to adjust their organization to fast-changing requirements and environments.

Most often, the best bet is a happy medium, in which new technologies are assigned to a separate team but explored within the current R&D organization (see sidebar, “An R&D makeover to sustain market leadership”).

The right approach is also a function of the situation and the culture. Consider the electric powertrain in the automotive industry—the different manufacturers offer a sample of all of the archetypes.

To be future-ready, adopt new ways of working

The traditional waterfall development model that some organizations still follow is so protracted that products can be obsolete by the time they are released. Long development times become impracticable when businesses factor in the out-of-sync cycle times of software and hardware components. In addition, a siloed and fragmented organizational structure makes it hard to respond nimbly to new process requirements.

Fast-changing customer demands and rapidly evolving technologies have increased the premium for enterprises and their R&D organizations to be adaptable, flexible, and future-oriented. And the coordination, integration, and speed needed in R&D today call for new ways of working. These include agile methods that enable fast iterations and cross-functional, flexible teams that ensure that the concerns of all relevant stakeholders—people from different functional units, as well as the different engineering teams, project managers, and customer representatives—are addressed. For example, a team working on autonomous driving would include not only software engineers but also hardware engineers from the steering, brake-system, and overall car-design teams, as well as those working on user interface design.

To foster a future orientation within the R&D function, companies can adopt certain design features and practices, in particular those structures that promote agility:

• A flat organization in which teams are granted full responsibility to design solutions. This creates a strong sense of ownership among individuals
• End-to-end, cross-functional teams whose talent is drawn from all the relevant and traditional R&D functions. Often, teams are supported by individuals outside of R&D, such as marketing managers or customer representatives. Team membership is stable and changes only when projects are finished or strategic priorities change
• Pools of experts (both internal and external) that support projects with the talent they need
• Resource allocation that is flexible, shifting as needs change
• More co-location time for teams, wherever possible
• Role descriptions and rewards that align with the new organizational structure and targets

These practices usually suggest that the company might consider changing certain roles in the organization—particularly in light of the widespread need for more architects, as leaders are charged with empowering teams to foster innovation more than ever before. In fact, an automotive manufacturer saw its leadership transformation as a driving force for putting in place its new R&D organization.

A further question we are hearing is: how does all of this work in a remote working environment? The bulk of these practices can be implemented in a digitally enabled organization if co-location is not an option, with priority for practical matters such ensuring teams have sufficient bandwidth to connect as often as needed. Clear roles and targets will be especially important as well, as will an emphasis on empowering teams and individuals.

With ever-expanding product portfolios—from more product variation to additional software embedded in engineered products—R&D organizations tell us they are struggling to keep up pace. That makes the shift from a traditional, component-based approach to a functional all the more essential.

Change isn’t easy for this traditionally black-box area of the organization. Engineers themselves struggle with how to reengineer their own work processes, often not knowing where to start. To determine the right blueprint, it helps to step back and reflect on current performance and future needs by asking a few central questions:

• Do we have a clear way of addressing the complexity that comes from interfaces?
• How are we handling interdependencies between systems? Is complexity increasing, and if so, are we well set up for the future demands?
• Do we have what it takes to adapt to a larger proportion of software development in our R&D?
• Are we sufficiently agile and flexible to adjust our focus based on changing demand? Could we handle more frequent changes in demand?
• How prepared are we for future technologies? Do we have the right structure in place to acquire and scale them?
• Do we have sufficiently clear roles, interfaces, and end-to-end responsibilities within R&D between teams and sites and to other departments?

There is no master formula for making this shift—nor could there be, given the differences across industries and from organization to organization—but certain principles prevail. Abiding by the principles outlined here can provide a blueprint needed for integration at the right points, and the much-needed transparency across R&D. If R&D is the company’s engine of innovation, its own transformation is more than a matter of securing market share, it’s about being built for a fast-changing present in order to secure the future.

Anne Hidma is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Amsterdam office, where Vendla Sandström is a consultant, and Sebastian Küchleris a partner in the Munich office.

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Building and managing a research team

Building your team, what is a research team.

What constitutes a research team in one department or institution might be described elsewhere as a research group, research centre, research unit or research institute. Regardless of the terminology used, the key characteristic of a research team is that it comprises a group of people working together in a committed way towards a common research goal.

Research team diversity

There are many different configurations of research teams in academia and boundaries can be 'fuzzy'. They may comprise co-investigators, fractional or pooled staff, technical and clerical staff and postgraduate research students. There may also be inter- and intra-institutional dimensions and increasingly international ones; some team members' contributions may well be largely virtual, via email, phone or videoconference.

Also, team members may have different disciplinary backgrounds, different motivations and aspirations, and different cultural backgrounds. Over time, team members' roles may change from being core (fully dedicated to the research goal) to peripheral (committed to this research goal, but also working in one or more other teams), and vice-versa.

Assessing the balance and composition of your team. 

Ideally, the balance and composition of the team in terms of skills, expertise and other contributions will be appropriate to achieve the team's objectives, i.e. for the  research goal the team is working towards. The research team leader needs to be confident that team members have, or can develop, the necessary skills and knowledge for the research in hand, and you will make recruitment decisions on that basis.

There is also another perspective on the effective team which it is good to consider. In addition to knowledge, experience and skills individuals have different behavioural traits or characteristics they bring to the way they carry out their work and these can be aligned to particular roles in the team: some are very good at seeing a big picture, others very good at detailed work. Some are very oriented towards action - good at just getting things done; others are natural communicators and networkers. The need for these different roles will emerge at different times and it is worth considering the composition of your team to ensure you have a balance of strengths. 

To find out more about specific team roles and the research by Meredith Belbin on which they are based, see the section further down this page. 

Managing your team

Your responsibilities as a manager of the group.

These are the responsibilities identified in Adair's action-centred leadership model :

• establish, agree and communicate standards of performance and behaviour
• establish style, culture, approach of the group - soft skill elements
• monitor and maintain discipline, ethics, integrity and focus on objectives
• anticipate and resolve group conflict, struggles or disagreements
• assess and change as necessary the balance and composition of the group
• develop team-working, cooperation, morale and team-spirit
• develop the collective maturity and capability of the group - progressively increase group freedom and authority
• encourage the team towards objectives and aims - motivate the group and provide a collective sense of purpose
• identify, develop and agree team- and project-leadership roles within group
• enable, facilitate and ensure effective internal and external group communications
• identify and meet group training needs
• give feedback to the group on overall progress; consult with, and seek feedback and input from the group.

Team  roles and development

A research team consists of people working together in a committed way towards a common research goal. Teams, like individuals and organisations mature and develop and have a fairly clearly defined growth cycle. Bruce Tuckman's 1965 four-stage model explains this cycle. It may be helpful  to reflect on your team's current stage of development  in order to identify relevant approaches to leadership and management. In addition to understanding the development of your team over time, having an understanding of the preferred ‘team roles', the characteristics and expected social behaviour, of individual team members, including the team leader, will help ensure that the team performs effectively together. Using team role or individual profiling tools can offer insights into building and maintaining an effective team, but team role analysis is most useful if all members evaluate their own and others' preferred roles, whichever tools are chosen.

There are a number of team role and individual profile tools available and your institution's staff development department or equivalent may have registered practitioners in one or more of these who can help you and your team understand your preferred team roles or working styles.

In the 1970s, Meredith Belbin and colleagues at the Henley Management College identified nine team roles, based on long-term psychometric tests and studies of business teams. Belbin defined team roles as "a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way". The resulting role definitions fall into three categories, each with strengths and allowable weaknesses, and have been used widely in practice for team development in the intervening decades. Further research by Belbin has led to the addition of a tenth ‘Specialist' role in recent years. Watch this short introduction to the work of Belbin , or read about the team roles.

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Research Team Structure

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A scientific research team is a group of individuals, working to complete a research project successfully. When run well, the research team members work closely, and have clearly defined roles. Every team member should know their role, and how it plays into the project as a whole. Ultimately, the principal investigator is responsible for every aspect of the project.

In this article, we’ll review research team roles and responsibilities, and the typical structure of a scientific research team. If you are forming a research team, or are part of one, this information can help you ensure smooth operations and effective teamwork.

Team Members

A group of individuals working toward a common goal: that’s what a research team is all about. In this case, the shared goal between team members is the successful research, data analysis, publication and dissemination of meaningful findings. There are key roles that must be laid out BEFORE the project is started, and the “CEO” of the team, namely the Principal Investigator, must provide all the resources and training necessary for the team to successfully complete its mission.

Every research team is structured differently. However, there are five key roles in each scientific research team.

1. Principal Investigator (PI):

this is the person ultimately responsible for the research and overall project. Their role is to ensure that the team members have the information, resources and training they need to conduct the research. They are also the final decision maker on any issues related to the project. Some projects have more than one PI, so the designated individuals are known as Co-Principal Investigators.

PIs are also typically responsible for writing proposals and grant requests, and selecting the team members. They report to their employer, the funding organization, and other key stakeholders, including all legal as well as academic regulations. The final product of the research is the article, and the PI oversees the writing and publishing of articles to disseminate findings.

2. Project or Research Director:

This is the individual who is in charge of the day-to-day functions of the research project, including protocol for how research and data collection activities are completed. The Research Director works very closely with the Principal Investigator, and both (or all, if there are multiple PIs) report on the research.

Specifically, this individual designs all guidelines, refines and redirects any protocol as needed, acts as the manager of the team in regards to time and budget, and evaluates the progress of the project. The Research Director also makes sure that the project is in compliance with all guidelines, including federal and institutional review board regulations. They also usually assist the PI in writing the research articles related to the project, and report directly to the PI.

3. Project Coordinator or Research Associate:

This individual, or often multiple individuals, carry out the research and data collection, as directed by the Research Director and/or the Principal Investigator. But their role is to also evaluate and assess the project protocol, and suggest any changes that might be needed.

Project Coordinators or Research Associates also need to be monitoring any experiments regarding compliance with regulations and protocols, and they often help in reporting the research. They report to the Principal Investigator, Research Director, and sometimes the Statistician (see below).

4. Research Assistant:

This individual, or individuals, perform the day-to-day tasks of the project, including collecting data, maintaining equipment, ordering supplies, general clerical work, etc. Typically, the research assistant has the least amount of experience among the team members. Research Assistants usually report to the Research Associate/Project Coordinator, and sometimes the Statistician.

5. Statistician:

This is the individual who analyzes any data collected during the project. Sometimes they just analyze and report the data, and other times they are more involved in the organization and analysis of the research throughout the entire study. Their primary role is to make sure that the project produces reliable and valid data, and significant data via analysis methodology, sample size, etc. The Statistician reports both to the Principal Investigator and the Research Director.

Research teams may include people with different roles, such as clinical research specialists, interns, student researchers, lab technicians, grant administrators, and general administrative support staff. As mentioned, every role should be clearly defined by the team’s Principal Investigator. Obviously, the more complex the project, the more team members may be required. In such cases, it may be necessary to appoint several Principal Administrators and Research Directors to the research team.

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26 Most Important R&D KPIs and Metrics

• Updated on July 13, 2023

If you want to accurately measure your Research and Development performance but don’t where to start, we collected all the necessary R&D KPIs and metrics for you!

Also, we are proud to present our R&D Dashboard templates if you need to make the analysis and recording within you Research and Development department. But first, you can learn more about the R&D key metrics!

What is KPI in research and development?

Research and development KPIs or key performance indicators are used to determine the performance of research and development departments in businesses.

Why should you track r&d KPIs?

You should track research and development key metrics to have a clear point of view about the state of your R&D department. That way, you can improve and anvance your R&D department in an organized manner.

What are the most important KPIs in r&d?

Research and development departments deal with different issues in each other company, so there are various metrics you can use. However, you can see the top 26 research and development KPIs below to get a better idea.

Research and Development Metrics

1. Proposal Success Rate

R&D Metrics / Project Progress / Work Effectiveness

Description: Percentage of grant applications that successfully received funding and can go further with the R&D.

Calculation Method / Formula: number of applications that were accepted and got funds / number of all applications

Should be High or Low?: The higher % the better. Otherwise there is needed extra work time on creating or redefining ideas.

2. Ideas turned into experiments

Description: This shows of how many ideas within some period of time went into the experimental phase. It depends on how many ideas there is; has granted funds and if the R&D team is managing the time given properly.

Calculation Method / Formula: number of ideas within some period of time went into the experimental phase / number of ideas that were supposed to be in the experimental phase within specified period of time

Should be High or Low?: If the % is going down it may indicate not enough resources in people or equipment.

3. Projects completed

R&D Metrics / Project Progress / Work Effectiveness / Time Management

Description: Shows the ratio of completed within all started projects. But in case there are some changes, or the grant funds are frozen or for some other seasons the project cannot continue it can have influence on the completion ratio. This metrics allows you to track if you have enough resources and capability to open more tasks and manage to stay on time with the work planned.

Calculation Method / Formula: completed projects / all planned projects

Should be High or Low?: If the % is going down it may indicate not enough resources in people or equipment or some changes in a project or requirement that may close the project not completed.

4. Time-to-market

Description: This metrics stands for how quickly your company plan and execute the projects. It is the duration from Phase 0 to Market Release. Average number of days per project

Calculation Method / Formula: It can be calculated as simple average: Cumulative number of days of all finished projects / number of projects

Should be High or Low?: If the time to market exceed planned days, it can give some indication about incorrect assumptions or some unexpected problems

5. Time for the experiments

Description: This is metrics shows time spent only for the experiment phase. That time can be very different depending on a sector of the R&D department. The unit of time may be measured in Days as default, but it can be also adjusted for your needs.

Calculation Method / Formula: cumulative experimental time of number of projects / number of projects

Should be High or Low?: If the time goes over a target this may indicate problems that weren’t predicted in the planning phase.

6. Deviation from Schedule

Description: This metrics measures how accurate planned project schedules are. And may indicate if there is some need for changing the system of planning or find some bottleneck of the process.

Calculation Method / Formula: (Actual Time to Make – Planned Time to make) / Planned Time to Make.

Should be High or Low?: Based on the equation if the value is below zero it means the projects’ time are overcalculated and probably the time evaluation should be restructured. The same if the value goes above zero but it means the predicted time probably was too small for the available resources.

7. Portfolio in existing products

R&D Metrics / Product Investment / Budget Management

Description: Percentage of R&D Budget which keep the existing products.

Calculation Method / Formula: Cost of sustaining the exisiting products / total R&D budget

8. R&D costs / Total costs

R&D Metrics / Product Investment / Budget Management / Cost

Description: This metrics shows what is the percentage of exactly the R&D cost among Total Costs of the R&D department. (or among total cost of the company)?

Calculation Method / Formula: R&D cost / Total cost of R&D dept.

Should be High or Low?: This is just an orientation information.

9. License costs / Total R&D cost

Description: Shows how big part of Total costs is License Costs.

Calculation Method / Formula: Licence cost / Total cost od R&D dept.

10. R&D Costs / Sales

R&D Metrics / Product Investment / Budget Management / Cost / Sales / Performance

Description: It shows the ratio between money spend on R&D and the money earned from Total Sales

Calculation Method / Formula: Total R&D cost / Total sales

Should be High or Low?: First of all, R&D cost should not be higher than total sales, but also the higher difference there will be the higher profit will be observed

11. Product improvements / R&D cost

Description: Shows how big part of R&D costs is Product Improvements.

Calculation Method / Formula: Improvement Costs / R&D Costs

Should be High or Low?: This is an orientation information. There might be some target to reduce that cost, but it depends on the characteristics of R&D projects.

12. Cost Savings Attributable to R&D

R&D Metrics / Product Investment / Budget Management / Cost / Savings

Description: This metrics helps to calculate the cost savings because of the R&D Department’s improvements. Cost savings in given period of time.

Calculation Method / Formula: Might be calculated by (time needed to compleete some task before – time needed after improvenents) * workinghour cost in some period of time

Should be High or Low?: Based on that measurement we can measure how long it will take to “pay back” the cost of improvement.

13. Total Patents Filed

R&D Metrics / Cost / R&D Investment / Product Investment / Brand Value

Description: This metrics shows the number of patents waiting to be approved by the patent institution.

Should be High or Low?: If the patents are unique or it is predicted that they will bring income higher than cost of keeping patent itself then the higher number is better but the target should be set based on how much valuable they can be.

14. Ideas in the Pipeline

Description: It helps to track the number of ideas that were completed and put in a schedule in an assumed time or period.

Should be High or Low?: Target depends on the R&D sector and taken period of time.

15. Projects that meet planned targets

Description: It helps to track the number of projects which follow to the plan schedule in each time or period.

16. Products launched on time

Description: This metrics shows how many projects were completed and launched out of the planned to be completed in that given period.

Calculation Method / Formula: number of projects completed / number of sheduled projects to be completed

Should be High or Low?: If the % is much lower the assumption in scheduling should be checked.

17. Number of products released

R&D Metrics / Work Effectiveness / Products / Brand Value

Description: Shows how many products were released in a given time.

Should be High or Low?: Target depends on the R&D sector, time and value per product.

18. Income from New products

R&D Metrics / Products / Revenue / Sales / Profitability

Description: New products (which might not be yet noticed by all the target customers) sales value among total sales in percentage.

Calculation Method / Formula: new product sales value / total incom from all product sales

Should be High or Low?: It can help to plan in future some steps to make the product more visible from the beginning.

19. Budget Variance / Cost Variance (CV)

R&D Metrics / Budget Management / Financial Performance / Revenue / Cost

Description: This metrics shows how accurate is your planning the project costs and how well you manage the budget during the time of project life from the beginning until Market Release. The percentage in the end of project shows what is the percentage of assumed at the beginning cost. If the value comes close to zero long before the end of the project it may show that the budget evaluation was wrong.

Calculation Method / Formula: Earned Value – Actual Cost

Should be High or Low?: If the conclusion is: below 0 – you are behind the schedule; 0 – you are on schedule; above zero – ahead of schedule.

20. Return on Innovation Investment (ROI)

R&D Metrics / Revenue / Budget Management / Financial Performance / Investment

Description: This metrics can help to predict if the investment in the new product was worth the cost and how long it might take for money return.

Calculation Method / Formula: ( Profits of New Product or Service Sales) / (Expenditures Generated in Creating these New Products or Services)

21. Products launched on budget

R&D Metrics / Budget Management / Product Investment / Work Efficiency

Description: This metrics shows percentage of new services or products that has been finished within expected budget. It shows how accurate is the cost projection.

Should be High or Low?: If the metrics should be as close as possible to 100%, if it is much lower it may indicate wrong budget planning or lots of unexpected changes that were not included in the calculations.

22. Research & Development Effectiveness Index (RDEI)

R&D Metrics / Work Efficiency / Revenue / R&D Investment / Profitability

Description: It shows how the profit generated by new products compares to total R&D expenses. Success of product vs development efforts.

Calculation Method / Formula: Profit from New Products / R&D Sending

23. Total R&D Headcount

R&D Metrics / Employee Management / Budget Management

Description: Number of employees in the R&D department.

Should be High or Low?: The target should be based on projections and which direction company is going, what is the budget for hiring.

24. Portfolio in Core and Growth Projects

R&D Metrics / Project Progress / Work Effectiveness / Cost

Description: This metrics is the percentage of Projects that will not be completed even though company has already invested in them.

Should be High or Low?: It will have strong negative or positive impact on the growth and prosperity of the company.

25. R&D Budget

R&D Metrics / Budget Management / R&D Investment / Cost

Description: This metrics is the budget of the company intended for the R&D Department.

Should be High or Low?: May depend on the target and the direction of the company.

26. Suggested ideas by the team

R&D Metrics / Work Effectiveness / Product Investment

Description: That is a number of ideas which the R&D Department came up with during some period of time.

Should be High or Low?: In general, the more ideas the better, but the quality of ideas has an impact on further work and eventual success.

Below is the summary of R&D KPI metrics:

Most Important KPIs for Different Industries

If you are interested in other industries or departments and their performance, you should learn more about their KPIs via our related articles!

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3M Research & Development

Designed to be a LEED Certified building

100+ 3M products used in the construction

Under the parking lot is a 640,000 gallon storm water retention system (size of an Olympic Pool).

We are a new group, working on new products for new markets – like optical films that can go into augmented-reality wearable devices. It’s exciting that we are investing in higher-risk, higher-reward innovation. – Susan Kent

I am working on an adhesive for a new dry erase surface with my counterparts in the New Platform group, who were in another building. Now, I can see them face-to-face and collaborate much easier. This fits perfectly into 3M’s core culture. –Ying-Yuh Lu

This space represents an opportunity to work differently. Sometimes that’s enough to cause you to think in a different way. Just like visiting customers, you see things in new ways. We don’t know yet what can happen. – Lee Stanek

This building is beautiful and future-oriented. This is the ideal environment to brainstorm together and with our customers. We will work on solutions to reduce emissions, improve safety lighting and develop advancements for automotive. – Terry Ceulemans

There are 414 trees, 2,730 shrubs and 4,366 perennials planted on the site

Technologies

The company owns 51 technology platforms, which range from adhesives and abrasives, to ceramics and nanotechnology. Our scientists around the world share and combine these technologies across all our businesses to invent and manufacture cutting-edge products. Roughly one-third of 3M’s sales come from products introduced in the last five years.

3M R&D at a Glance

Wanted: insatiable curiosity. 3M’s work – with integrity, collaboration and innovation at its core – changes lives, homes and businesses in real ways every day. Here, you can explore your talents and reinvent your career – all with one company.

3M applies science to life around the world. The Carlton Society is our science hall of fame, honoring the very best among our scientific community for extraordinary work as scientists and mentors.

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What do you want to do?

What is research and development.

Research and development (R&D) is when businesses gather knowledge to create new products or discover new ways to improve their existing products and services. Larger companies may have their own research and development team that will test and refine products or processes before commercial use. However, many companies outsource this work to universities due to a lack of in-house capacity and to access the expertise and advanced research equipment they possess.

Some companies invest far more in R&D than others due to the competitiveness and demands of their industry. For example, a consumer technology company is always trying to release devices that are more appealing than its competitors so will invest heavily on product design research to make their devices more innovative. 

Businesses of all sizes need to invest in research and development if they want to achieve future growth, stay abreast of developments in their industry and reduce production costs. Fortunately, Brunel University London is a world leading research institution dedicated to delivering solutions to a broad range of organisations of all sizes. We have academics from a wide range of disciplines that are bringing significant benefits to our business partners.

Benefits of research and development at Brunel University London:

• Inexpensive way to explore new ideas and find a gap in the market
• We can help you secure funding from the Government and the EU to develop your business whether your organisation is large or small
• We have world class equipment, expertise and facilities to conduct research projects and are continually investing money in the latest technology
• Working with Brunel can improve brand reputation and profile and potentially attract future investment
• Bringing innovative products to the market could give your business a competitive advantage. 

Which research and development method is right for you? 

There are a number of services we offer, however, it is important to have an objective when selecting a specific type of research and development so you can achieve your business goals in the most efficient way possible. 

For example: 

Objective: Develop new products and services

Innovation Voucher If you have an idea for a new product we can offer you a voucher valued between £1,000 - £5,000 to cover the project costs. This initiative is best suited to new start-ups and SMEs. 

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships  Transfer knowledge and expertise from the academic partner to your organisation to enable a progressive change in technology and expertise to impact on new products and services.  Co-Innovate 

A scheme funded by the European Regional Development Fund to help support new product and service innovation for SMEs in London. The services offered by Co-Innovate are free but you must be an SME based in London. 

Objective: Resolve a specific product or process problem 

Consultancy 

Access directly Brunel's world leading academic expertise and have focused attention to address a specific problem or issue. 

Objective: Explore ideas for new products and services

Research Partnerships

Larger organisations may want to form a partnership with us to generate mutually valuable and beneficial research for the long term. 

Undergraduate Student Project

Use Brunel's students to develop and amplify new concepts and prototypes. If this is something you are interested in please get in touch with our research team. 

Commercialisation 

It's possible that right now a particular piece of research is being developed in one of our research centres that could potentially be a marketable product/service within your industry and you may want to monetise it. 

Objective: Up-skill staff

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships 

Highly qualified staff or graduates work in your company's premises and project manage an agreed programme to transfer new technical skills and knowledge to your company staff. 

Co-Innovate 

Co-Innovate organise a number of events throughout the year for SMEs to help small businesses gain valuable business insights. 

Can't see your requirements here?  If you have a different business objective that we have not covered but could benefit from employing research and development please get in touch so we can see if we can help you. 

Your project could be short or long, large or small in scope and scale so it is hard to calculate a cost of a project until we have analysed different factors such as your specific needs, project duration and level of expertise needed. Once we get in contact with you to discuss your goals and put all these factors into consideration we can then let you know the cost before work commences. However, we may also be able to help you get access to funding to cover the costs of some of these services. 

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Research and Development (R&D) vs. Product Development

What Is Research and Development (R&D)?

Research and development is the practice or business unit involved with developing or enhancing new products and services. Often in research and development, companies or governments conceptualize new products. The research portion occurs when a company's R&D team tests the viability of a potential product. This is the act of discovering new sciences that can be used to create new products. The development portion comes after the research and is the act of turning the discovered science into a useful product that the company can market and sell.

Companies invest in research and development when their product lines become outdated, to gain or maintain a competitive edge, or when competitors create similar or superior products. Research and development is vital for the sustained growth and success of a company.

Research and development activities can differ among companies within an industry and across different industries, and they can be assigned in-house or to contracted third-parties. Many companies contain their R&D responsibilities in-house to protect intellectual property.

What Is Product Development?

On the other hand, product development is the entire process of researching, designing, creating, testing , marketing, and selling new products. Research and development is essentially the first step in developing a new product, but product development is not exclusively research and development. It is the entire product life cycle , from conception to sale.

Product development is also not exclusive to designing, implementing, and selling new products. Existing products can go through product development to revamp old features or add new features so the product sells better or adds greater value to consumers. Any time a new product is created and sold—or any time an existing product has added features and is resold—it is going through product development.

Research and Development vs. Product Development

The difference between research and development and product development is that research and development is the conception phase in the product life cycle , while product development is the entire process of designing, creating, and marketing new products or existing products with new features.

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Product Development Use Cases

Risks with product development, what product development engineers do, what are product development strategies, is product development part of r&d, why product development is necessary, is product development agile, product development key skills, stages to product development.

Research and Development Duties and Responsibilities

What are the research and development duties and responsibilities? Read on to learn more.

What Is Research and Development?

Research and development (R&D) is the process of designing, conducting, and documenting experiments to make scientific and technological  advances . 

The purpose of research and development is to increase knowledge, solve problems, and develop new technologies. And that will lead to new products, services, or ways of doing things.

The term research and development is often used interchangeably with the term applied research. 

Applied research goes beyond basic research to focus on producing practical results that can be used by industry or society.

Research and development can happen in private industry, universities, medical centers, or even government agencies.

Most companies employ their own research teams to conduct R&D activities. 

Research and development specialists are responsible for leading research efforts.

They are typically multidisciplinary in their approach. Also, they are working closely with teams of engineers, scientists, and other professionals to achieve research goals .

Research and development specialists are expected to have an excellent knowledge of their organization’s products or services.

They must have a strong understanding of the organization’s customers’ needs. They should also know how the product or service can meet those needs. 

Research and development specialists may also be responsible for ensuring that the organization meets regulatory requirements for conducting clinical trials or product testing. 

They often work in teams with marketing specialists to design new products or develop new uses for existing products.

Research and Development Responsibilities

Research and development specialists share the following responsibilities:

• Develop a comprehensive plan, including what experiments will be conducted, how many subjects will be involved in the trial, and an outline of the tests to be used. 
• Collecting data as needed from experiments previously conducted by other doctors, medical researchers, or engineers . 
• Conducting research tests and experiments to gather data on a particular project or product. 
• Analyzing the data produced by the experiment and making any necessary adjustments to the study’s design or results. 
• Creating reports detailing test results and any conclusions drawn from those results. 

Research and development specialists may prepare these reports for internal use within their own company or agency, as well as for publication in scientific journals, trade publications, or technical manuals. 

Developing new technologies or processes that can be used during clinical trials for drugs or medical devices. 

Research and development specialists may also work with doctors to conduct clinical outcome studies to determine whether a drug is effective at treating certain diseases or conditions. 

Specialists may also evaluate whether existing drugs can be used to treat other conditions that were not originally intended by drug manufacturers. 

The Bottom Line

People who work as research and development specialists typically enjoy working with their hands and must be highly detail-oriented. 

They must also be able to work as part of a team, as well as independently, and communicate effectively with doctors and other research staff. 

Research and development specialists may need to travel to conduct experiments or visit client facilities to learn more about their needs, which could require them to spend long hours on the road.

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The Research Development team provides proposal development and strategic and tactical support, where we tailor the below support, services, and resources based on project complexity, scale, and scope.

• Timelines, Checklists, and Folder Structures —These organizational tools are designed to help proposing teams stay organized and on track to  meet proposal submission deadlines. We recommend utilizing these tools for complex, multidisciplinary, and large in-scope proposals.
• Templates —Our office develops templates for key components of proposals, such as narratives, facilities documents, and letters. These templates are tailored to meet specific solicitation requirements. Additionally, we standardize text for supplementary documents such as Facilities and Resources. Utilize these templates to help you streamline the writing process and position your proposal for success.
• Proposal Review —We offer proposal reviews at any stage. For preliminary drafts, we provide comments on focus, organization, and the development of ideas to position your proposal for success. For near-final drafts, we focus on effectiveness, impact, and clarity while ensuring consistency across sections and multiple authors, and helping to condense text and/or eliminate redundancies. Our goal in reviewing is to help align your proposal to the solicitation and ensure you are meeting the funder’s intentions.
• Logic Models —Logic models demonstrate your theory of change in a succinct and clear fashion and provide the opportunity to articulate your intended impact. They are often a required component of proposals. We can help guide your team through the development of a logic model and think through your resources, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts.
• Broader Impacts, Broadening Participation, Education Plans and Inclusion Plans —We can consult, review, and provide feedback on writing these documents and including these components in your proposals.
• Graphic Support —We can provide strategic feedback on figure content, placement, and usage in grant proposals. We can also connect you with a graphic designer to develop figures.
• Team Science Support —We can provide Team Science resources, training, and facilitation for large, campus-wide initiatives.

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Midyis / yellis, alis / cem ibe, research and development team.

Irenka Suto, Head of Assessment and Research

Irenka oversees all Research & Development activity in CEM. She holds a first degree in Natural Sciences and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Cambridge. With over 100 journal and conference publications, Irenka joined CEM in 2021 from Cambridge University Press and Assessment’s group-wide research division. For many years, Irenka led research programmes to evaluate, reform and develop assessments. Her previous team also focused on making test development processes more reliable and robust.

With over 20 years’ research experience, Irenka enjoys working with students, teachers, and other educationalists to understand how best to support them with equitable and engaging assessments. She is fascinated by the question of what contributes to a student’s success in education.

John Ardley, Assessment Developer

John specialises in the development of non-verbal assessment and, as a designer, also has a keen interest in the development of materials for students with special educational needs. He completed his BSc in Computer Studies at Newcastle University and progressed into a role as a Research Associate at Durham University while working on CEM’s Alis system.

Starting at CEM in 1994, John now has over 15 years’ experience in all aspects of assessment development. He enjoys discovering new technologies to provide creative solutions to add value to the product range and is also active in finding solutions to online assessment challenges.

Emma Barthel, Assessment Developer

Drawing on 15 years’ experience as a primary school teacher, Emma has added valuable insight and practical expertise in the development of CEM’s Early Years assessment (BASE). Emma also takes a leading role in the development of CEM’s high-stakes assessments, from liaising with schools to writing assessments to trialling and statistical analysis. Along with her Primary PGCE, Emma holds a BSc in Chemistry from Durham University as well as a Post-Graduate Diploma in Educational Assessment.

Emma has a particular interest in the development of mathematics assessments and is currently collaborating with Cambridge Mathematics to embed their extensive research into CEM’s products.

Matthew Carroll, Senior Research Officer

Matthew is a senior researcher in Cambridge University Press & Assessment’s groupwide research division, with special responsibility for CEM-focused research. He has worked in education research since 2017, but prior to this was a scientist working in the field of conservation ecology. Matthew holds a degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, and an MRes and PhD from the University of York. He has also been a science communicator, working with school groups in the North East of England.

Matthew has worked closely with CEM’s Research and Development Team since 2020. He helps to establish collaborative research projects with the wider group research division, provides an extra source of analytical advice, and has carried out research into areas including the impacts of Covid on teachers in CEM schools and the links between performance in CEM tests and high-stakes examinations.

Gideon Copestake, Assessment Development Lead

Gideon leads the team of assessment developers on the creation of new assessment content, scoping and constructing new assessments, evaluating assessment content and statistical analysis. Formerly a primary school teacher, Gideon holds an MSc in Educational Assessment along with a BSc (Hons) in Engineering and a PGCE (Upper Primary).

In his 18 years at CEM Gideon has extensive experience working as a Statistical Officer and Research Associate for the development of CEM’s Early Years assessment (PIPS Baseline). He is currently overseeing a multi-disciplinary working group, coming up with ideas for, and investigating viability of, new assessment initiatives.

Lyn Dale, Senior Assessment Manager

Lyn is an assessment specialist with over 16 years’ experience in design, validation and use of psychometric tests in education and business. She has drawn on her Master’s degree in occupational psychology and measurement to manage large-scale assessment projects in education. As the lead developer for student personal styles assessments, Lyn is experienced at construct mapping, item creation, test trialling and data evaluation. She has played a key role in digital assessment projects and learning management system content creation across Cambridge University Press & Assessment.

Lyn is an active member of the British Psychological Society and has spoken internationally on measurement topics that address the psychology of effective studying and student retention. She advises secondary and higher education, and vocational training on personal attribute and ‘soft skills’ measurement. A qualified business coach, Lyn has a special interest in using assessment and coaching techniques to improve student outcomes.

Chris Jellis, Senior Research Associate

Chris has been with CEM since 2003. Beginning as a biological scientist, he has worked on vaccine development and studied gene sequencing among other topics. After gaining his PGCE in Science Education at Hull University, Chris spent fifteen years teaching IT and Business Studies. He also holds Bachelor’s degrees in Biology and English and Master’s degrees in Education and Education Assessment.

In 2007, he was awarded his Doctorate in Education at Durham University with a thesis entitled ‘Metalearning: PGCE Students Learning about Learning’. A dedicated lifelong learner, Chris has interests in all aspects of learning, from creating new assessments to researching characteristics of student knowledge and understanding. He currently co-chairs the Research Ethics Committee of Cambridge University Press and Assessment.

John Little, Statistician

As statistician within CEM with over 20 years’ experience, John is responsible for developing and refining the adaptive algorithms that sit behind almost all CEM assessments. He provides bespoke analysis and statistical insight to a range of schools from their CEM test results. John graduated with a Master’s degree in Maths and Statistics and holds a PhD in Bayesian Spatio-Temporal Modelling from Durham University.

John’s recent projects have included work with the wider Cambridge University Press and Assessment group on the impact of Covid and to see how CEM data can be used beyond its original application.

Andrew Lyth, Statistician

Beginning as a Research Associate in 1999, Andrew previously worked on the mathematical modelling of trends in Household Demography. His first degree was in Maths, and he has a Master’s degree in Statistics. Andrew specialises in predictions and value-added methodologies. His role includes explaining the statistics and methodologies that underpin students’ results to schools.

Working on a variety of different research projects, Andrew has covered topics such as: mental health; interventions to increase students’ physical activity; and the impact of lockdowns on students’ performances. His next research project will use data from the National Pupil Database to investigate relationships between performances on CEM’s assessments and attainment at Key Stage 4.

Catherine McKenna, Assessment Developer

Catherine has over 10 years’ experience of developing high-stakes assessments and takes a leading role in the creation of high-quality cognitive ability assessments. She also plays a key part in the development of new wellbeing products for primary and secondary students, utilising her BSc (Hons) in Psychology, MSc in Occupational Psychology and interest in research. 

Instrumental in designing and constructing new assessments, Catherine develops new items, peer reviews content, evaluates assessment performance, and conducts literature reviews and statistical analyses. Whilst she develops both verbal and non-verbal assessment content, Catherine has a specialist focus in developing non-verbal reasoning assessments.  

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Moderna and OpenAI partner to accelerate the development of life-saving treatments.

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Moderna partners with OpenAI to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise to thousands of employees across the company. Now every function is empowered with AI, creating novel use cases and GPTs that accelerate and expand the impact of every team.

Moderna has been at the intersection of science, technology, and health for more than 10 years. Moderna’s mission is to deliver the greatest possible impact to people through mRNA medicines—with the COVID-19 vaccine being their most well-known breakthrough. 

The company has partnered with OpenAI since early 2023. Now, ChatGPT Enterprise is evolving how Moderna operates across each function.

Moderna is using its platform for developing mRNA medicines to bring up to 15 new products to market in the next 5 years—from a vaccine against RSV to individualized cancer treatments. In order to achieve its ambitions, Moderna has adopted a people-centric, technology-forward approach, constantly testing new technology and innovation that can increase human capacity and clinical performance.

We believe very profoundly at Moderna that ChatGPT and what OpenAI is doing is going to change the world. We’re looking at every business process—from legal, to research, to manufacturing, to commercial—and thinking about how to redesign them with AI.

Moderna brings AI to everyone

Moderna adopted generative AI the same way Moderna adopts other technology: with the mindset of using the power of digital to maximize its positive impact on patients. To allow AI to flourish, they knew they needed to start with the user and invest in laying a strong foundation for change.

Moderna’s objective was to achieve 100% adoption and proficiency of generative AI by all its people with access to digital solutions in six months. “We believe in collective intelligence when it comes to paradigm changes,” said Miller, “it’s everyone together, everyone with a voice and nobody left behind.” For this, Moderna assigned a team of dedicated experts to drive a bespoke transformation program. Their approach combined individual, collective and structural change management initiatives.   

Individual change management initiatives included in-depth research and listening programs, as well as trainings hosted in person, online and with dedicated AI learning companions. “Using AI to teach AI was key to our success”, Miller points out. Collective change management initiatives included an AI prompt contest to identify the top 100 AI power users who were then structured as a cohort of internal Generative AI Champions. Moderna’s culture of learning led to local office hours in every business line and geography, and scaled through an internal forum on AI, which now has 2,000 active weekly participants. Lastly, structural change management initiatives included engaging Moderna’s CEO and executive committee members to foster AI culture through leadership meetings and town halls as well as incentive programs and sponsored events with internal and external experts.  

 This work led to an early win with the launch of an internal AI chatbot tool, mChat, at the beginning of 2023. Built on OpenAI’s API, mChat was a success, adopted by more than 80% of employees across the company, building a solid foundation for the adoption of ChatGPT Enterprise.  

90% of companies want to do GenAI, but only 10% of them are successful, and the reason they fail is because they haven’t built the mechanisms of actually transforming the workforce to adopt new technology and new capabilities.

Building momentum with ChatGPT Enterprise

With the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, Moderna had a decision to make: continue developing mChat as an all-purpose AI tool, or give employees access to ChatGPT Enterprise?

“As a science-based company, we research everything,” said Brice Challamel, Head of AI Products and Platforms at Moderna. Challamel’s team did extensive user testing comparing mChat, Copilot, and ChatGPT Enterprise. “We found out that the net promoter score of ChatGPT Enterprise was through the roof. This was by far the company-favorite solution, and the one we decided to double down on,” Challamel said.  

Once employees had a way to create their own GPTs easily, the only limit was their imaginations. “We were never here to fill a bucket, but to light a fire,” Challamel said. “We saw the fire spread, with hundreds of use cases creating positive value across teams. We knew we were on to something revolutionary for the company.”

The company’s results are beyond expectations. Within two months of the ChatGPT Enterprise adoption: 

• Moderna had 750 GPTs across the company
• 40% of weekly active users created GPTs 
• Each user has 120 ChatGPT Enterprise conversations per week on average

Augmenting clinical trial development with GPTs

One of the many solutions Moderna has built and is continuing to develop and validate with ChatGPT Enterprise is a GPT pilot called Dose ID. Dose ID has the potential to review and analyze clinical data and is able to integrate and visualize large datasets. Dose ID is intended for use as a data-analysis assistant to the clinical study team, helping to augment the team’s clinical judgment and decision-making.

 “Dose ID has provided supportive rationale for why we have picked a specific dose over other doses. It has allowed us to create customized data visualizations and it has also helped the study team members converse with the GPT to further analyze the data from multiple different angles,” said Meklit Workneh, Director of Clinical Development at Moderna. 

Dose ID uses ChatGPT Enterprise’s advanced data analysis feature to automate the analysis and verify the optimal vaccine dose selected by the clinical study team, by applying standard dose selection criteria and principles. Dose ID provides a rationale, references its sources, and generates informative charts illustrating the key findings. This allows for a detailed review, led by humans and with AI input, prioritizing safety and optimizing the vaccine profile prior to further development in late-stage clinical trials. 

“The Dose ID GPT has the potential to boost the amount of work we’re able to do as a team. We can comprehensively evaluate these extremely large amounts of data, and do it in a very efficient, safe, and accurate way, while helping to ensure security and privacy,” added Workneh.

Improving compliance and telling the company’s story

Moderna’s legal team boasts 100% adoption of ChatGPT Enterprise. “It lets us focus our time and attention on those matters that are truly driving an impact for patients,” said Shannon Klinger, Moderna’s Chief Legal Officer. 

Now, with the Contract Companion GPT, any function can get a clear, readable summary of a contract. The Policy Bot GPT helps employees get quick answers about internal policies without needing to search through hundreds of documents. 

Moderna’s corporate brand team has also found many ways to take advantage of ChatGPT Enterprise. They have a GPT that helps prepare slides for quarterly earnings calls, and another GPT that helps convert biotech terminology into approachable language for investor communications. 

“Sometimes we’re so in our own world, and AI helps the brand think beyond that,” explained Kate Cronin, Chief Brand Officer of Moderna. “What would my mother want to know about Moderna, versus a regulator, versus a doctor? How do we tell our story in an effective way across different audiences? That’s where I think there’s a huge opportunity.”

A team of a few thousand can perform like a team of 100,000

With an ambitious plan to launch multiple products in the next few years, Moderna sees AI as a key component to their success—and their ability to stay lean as a business while setting new benchmarks in innovation. 

“If we had to do it the old biopharmaceutical ways, we might need a hundred thousand people today,” said Bancel. “We really believe we can maximize our impact on patients with a few thousand people, using technology and AI to scale the company.” 

Moderna has been well positioned to leverage generative AI having spent the last decade building a robust tech stack and data platform. The company fosters a culture of learning and curiosity, attracting employees that excel in adopting new technologies and building AI-first solutions.

By making business processes at Moderna more efficient and accurate, the use of AI ultimately translates to better outcomes for patients. “I’m really thankful for the entire OpenAI team, and the time and engagement they have with our team, so that together we can save more lives,” Bancel said. 

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UB team receives funding to demonstrate effectiveness of ‘food-is-medicine’ in health care

UB faculty members Lucia Leone (left) and Jill Tirabassi are co-principal investigators on a food-is-medicine project funded by the American Heart Association. Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki

By DAVID J. HILL

Published April 18, 2024

A team of UB researchers has received funding from the American Heart Association (AHA) for research that will focus on the implementation of innovative food-prescription programs for older adults.

The AHA has awarded UB $400,000 for the 18-month project as part of the organization’s Health Care by Food initiative, which is leveraging research to build the evidence needed to show the clinical and cost-effectiveness of so-called “food-is-medicine” programs.

The AHA funding comes at a key time. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) earlier this year approved an amendment to New York State’s Medicaid 1115 waiver that enables the state to modify its Medicaid program to address the health disparities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The waiver paves the way for, among other things, investments in supporting strategies for improved access to food and nutrition, such as food-is-medicine programs.

The field of food-is-medicine is going to develop rapidly as other states, not just New York, have submitted Medicaid 1115 waivers, says Lucia Leone, associate professor in the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior, School of Public Health and Health Professions.

Leone is co-principal investigator on the AHA project with Jill Tirabassi, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.

“With the state’s Medicaid waiver approval, we know these programs are going to be coming down the pipeline in the next few years. Our aim is to look at three different types of food programs for adults over 65 in Western New York and develop ways to make them as user-friendly as possible,” Leone says.

“It is essential that we are able to quickly develop best practices for ensuring food prescription programs are successful at reaching the people who need them,” she adds. “This research will help practitioners who are looking to design food-prescription programs for their communities understand what works and what doesn’t.”

Food-is-medicine may be defined as providing healthy food resources to treat, manage and prevent specific chronic conditions in coordination with the health care sector.

Food-is-medicine programs often feature:

• Medically tailored meals, which are often delivered to patients with diet-related health conditions or among those at high risk.
• Produce prescription programs that integrate healthy food into a patient’s health care plan, enabling patients to better follow their health care team’s dietary advice.
• And medically tailored groceries, which may include a selection of grocery items prescribed by a registered dietitian or nutritionist for patients with diet-related acute and chronic health conditions who can prepare food at home.

A total of 75 participants will be recruited for the study from primary care clinics at Erie County Medical Center (ECMC). Participants will be split into three groups of 25, each of which will receive a different food-related program over 12 weeks.

One group will receive a weekly credit redeemable at Massachusetts Avenue Project’s mobile produce market. Another group will have fresh produce boxes delivered to their homes via FreshFix, a local food-delivery company co-founded by Leone. And the third group will have medically tailored meal kits, with recipes to make several meals, delivered to their homes each week. The food-delivery partners will curate the items that are sent in each box, tailoring the contents to meet dietary restrictions, such as diabetes or food allergies.

The researchers will focus particularly on the successes and challenges of the implementation of the food-is-medicine programs. Toward that end, participants will receive surveys each week, which will help Leone and Tirabassi gauge whether people used the voucher or food they received. A community advisory board will also be set up to help oversee the project and provide insight into participants’ lived experiences and how those affect their ability to participate in these programs. For example, do they struggle with using smart phone apps and websites to customize the food they receive?

“Older adults face unique barriers with food and nutrition access,” Tirabassi says, explaining the focus on adults over 65. “They often have multiple chronic health conditions, have experienced life course changes — becoming a widower, for example — and are on a fixed income. Many people in this age also have mobility and transportation challenges.”

The AHA project is focused on food-prescription program usage and not health outcomes for a very simple reason, Tirabassi says. “We already know that diet-related changes can affect health outcomes.” But, she adds, “Food-prescription programs have not had very high utilization rates, and that is what we need to change.”  

The Primary Care Research Institute in the Department of Family Medicine at the Jacobs School, which has expertise in healthy aging research, is also a partner on the project.

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If your organization decides that implementing part or all of the TeamSTEPPS curriculum would be of value, carefully think through how to implement and sustain what you intend to teach. Successful and sustainable implementation begins with effective implementation planning.

Basis of Implementation Planning

The TeamSTEPPS implementation steps are based on the principle of improving patient safety and quality of care by improving healthcare team processes. A team process is a series of interdependent actions that lead toward a desired endpoint. Examples of processes include admitting a patient, administering a medication, and transferring a patient from one care setting to another, which often is managed by a virtual team.

Improving a team process includes the following steps:

• Identify a recurring problem or opportunity for improvement that, if addressed, could lead to better patient safety or quality of care. An effective implementation plan must describe specifically what you want to "fix" or improve.
• Flowchart or map the process during which the targeted problem or opportunity for improvement occurs. Write down the process steps as they currently occur and identify who is doing what, when, and with which tools.
• Study the process to identify weak points where things could go wrong and lead to a recurrence of the target problem or opportunity. These weak points are called risk points.
• Design and implement interventions aimed at eliminating or reducing the impact of the risk points. The design and implementation of interventions will, in turn, prevent the targeted problem from recurring or will lead to your targeted improvements.
• Test the intervention to ensure that it did in fact eliminate or reduce the target problem or result in your targeted improvement.
• If the test shows that the intervention was successful, monitor intervention effectiveness, sustain positive process changes, and identify opportunities for further improvement.

Steps in Implementation Planning

The remainder of this section reviews the 10 steps that make up TeamSTEPPS implementation planning.

The 10 steps are:

• Create a Change Team.
• Define the problem, challenge, or opportunity for improvement.
• Define the aims of your TeamSTEPPS intervention.
• Design a TeamSTEPPS intervention.
• Develop a plan for testing the effectiveness of your TeamSTEPPS intervention.
• Develop an implementation plan.
• Develop a plan for sustained continuous improvement.
• Develop a communications plan.
• Finalize your TeamSTEPPS implementation plan and timeline.
• Engage key stakeholders in the creation, monitoring, and updates of your plan.

If you focus on the implementation of a single tool to address a specific concern or a smaller unit, you may simplify the process to focus on the parts directly relevant to your aims.

Step 1: Create a Change Team

Assemble a team of leaders, staff, and patients and family caregivers with the authority, expertise, credibility, motivation, and patient perspective needed to drive a TeamSTEPPS initiative.

Key Actions

• Select a multidisciplinary Change Team.
• Ensure representation from those most likely to be affected by the change as well as all disciplines and professions involved. Be sure to include different leadership levels, including senior leadership, clinical and technical experts, and frontline leadership. Including people from night and weekend shifts is also important.
• Consider adding members from ancillary services such as respiratory therapy, social work, and physical and occupational therapy.
• Ensure that at least one of the members has a thorough understanding of the parts of TeamSTEPPS that are your focus.
• If possible, ensure that the Change Team is supported by a person with experience in performance improvement, with skills in data collection, analysis, and presentation. Such a person may function as a permanent or temporary member of the team or simply offer advice and support when needed.

Tips for Success

• Because the Change Team will focus on improving processes within its own unit, choose members with relevant clinical expertise, a suitable workplace location, credibility, and direct involvement in the processes the TeamSTEPPS intervention will affect.
• Try to ensure that all Change Team members attend your TeamSTEPPS training.
• Limit the Change Team to five or six individuals.
• Consider involving physicians, nurses, and a patient familiar with the clinical workspace.
• Be sure people on your Change Team are perceived as effective team members by others they work with. You cannot successfully implement TeamSTEPPS with a leadership team that isn't committed to its principles. Members need to fully support the practices of effective teamwork and understand a culture of safety.

Step 2: Define the Problem, Challenge, or Opportunity for Improvement

State the problem, challenge, or opportunity for improvement your TeamSTEPPS intervention will target.

• Identify a problem, challenge, or opportunity, through consensus, that enhanced teamwork could improve. Also identify measurable outcomes. Strategies include:
• Reviewing unit performance and safety data as contained in incident reports, data from the AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture and the TeamSTEPPS Teamwork Perceptions Questionnaire, results of staff turnover and satisfaction surveys, and site-specific process and outcome measures.
• Reviewing reports of root cause analyses and failure modes and effects analyses.
• Asking frontline staff, "What bad outcomes are waiting to happen because of breakdowns in the transfer of critical information?" "What things keep you up at night?" "What common concerns do we hear from patients?" "What is contributing to staff burnout or turnover that can be fixed by better communication and teamwork?"
• Identify the process during which the problem, challenge, or opportunity occurs by stating what the process is, who is involved, and when and where it occurs.

Change Teams may want to define three or four problems or opportunities and then select the highest priority issue for the TeamSTEPPS intervention. When initiating the TeamSTEPPS intervention for the first time, begin with a solitary issue that is more likely to be successfully addressed, rather than starting with the "biggest, most complex" problem.

Look for problems or opportunities that meet the following criteria:

• The associated process occurs frequently.
• Breakdowns in team performance could result in harm to patients.
• Process change is feasible and likely within the short term.
• Ways to measure whether improvement occurs are available.

Step 3: Define the Aims of Your TeamSTEPPS Intervention

State in measurable terms what can be achieved with the TeamSTEPPS intervention: what will be achieved, who will be involved, when and where the change will occur, and how you will know something has improved.

• Develop one to three measurable aims for your TeamSTEPPS intervention, and state in one or two sentences what you hope will be achieved, who will be involved, and when and where the improvements will occur. Aims should align with your defined teamwork problem or opportunity for improvement. Aims can be based on the process of the TeamSTEPPS intervention itself or on the outcomes of that intervention.
• Team process aims focus on how well or often targeted teams carry out the TeamSTEPPS intervention. For example, state, "Increase the use of presurgical briefs in the OR by 40% within 3 months of implementing some or all of the TeamSTEPPS tools. These will include the entire OR team for the targeted OR and will be conducted using a briefing checklist."
• Outcome aims focus on changes that occur because your staff carry out the intervention. These aims can be directed at changes in team performance ( team outcome aims ) or in clinical results ( clinical outcome aims ). An example of a team outcome aim is, "Increase the perception of effective use of teamwork behaviors among primary care practice staff within 6 months of implementing selected TeamSTEPPS tools. We will use the TeamSTEPPS Teamwork Perceptions Questionnaire immediately after training and 6 months post-training." An example of a clinical outcome aim is, "Increase the percentage of long-term care residents who report being given their medications on time from 85% to 100% within 4 months of the TeamSTEPPS implementation."
• Strive to have a team process aim, a team outcome aim, and a clinical outcome aim, which is ideal (but not required). Delineating the aims becomes particularly important when testing the effectiveness of your TeamSTEPPS intervention.
• Develop aims that specifically address the target problem identified during step 2.
• Put time and thought into defining the problem and the aims of your TeamSTEPPS intervention, since they are the most important steps in developing your implementation plan. The target problem and stated aims drive the development of all remaining components of the implementation plan.

Step 4: Design a TeamSTEPPS Intervention

Design a TeamSTEPPS intervention that will address your targeted problem, challenge, or opportunity for improvement and will achieve your stated aims.

• Flowchart or map the process during which the target problem, challenge, or opportunity occurs. Write down the process steps as they currently occur and identify who is doing what, when, and with what tools, and where teamwork is required.
• Identify risk points where things could go wrong and lead to a recurrence of the problem or challenge or where the opportunity for improvement could be missed.
• Determine which TeamSTEPPS tools or strategies would work best to eliminate the process risk points.
• Draft your TeamSTEPPS intervention. State what tools and strategies will be implemented, who will use them, when , and where .
• Evaluate the planned TeamSTEPPS intervention for potential benefits and negative effects:
• Flowchart the redesigned process as you imagine it would look with your TeamSTEPPS intervention in place.
• Identify potential failure points in the redesigned process. Premortems are one approach to this task. How will you reduce the probability or severity of these failures?
• Identify potential benefits and negative effects of the redesigned process on units outside your workspace. How will you control potential negative effects?
• Ensure that the people creating the plan will be directly involved in implementing it. Plans that the staff help create and implement are more likely to succeed than plans that seem imposed from others who do not understand the challenges staff encounter.
• Keep your initial plan simple and one you can start to implement fairly quickly. Many plans bog down in the design phase and are never implemented. It is better to start simply and add activities as needed.
• View your plan as an initial guide and not something you expect to implement as-is no matter what happens. Your plan should change as you observe staff reactions to it. If it doesn't, you may not be listening and responding to feedback as carefully as you should.

Step 5: Develop a Plan for Testing Your TeamSTEPPS Interventions

Develop a method to determine whether the planned TeamSTEPPS intervention achieved its aims. What measurements are needed to determine whether you are achieving your goal?

Ideally, you will test to see whether the TeamSTEPPS intervention achieved each one of the aims generated during step 3. If time and resources are limited, select only one aim for testing. Base your selection on the importance of the aim and on the feasibility of testing it. Make sure the Change Team reviews the ideas for evaluating change on each of Kirkpatrick's four levels that were suggested previously in the measurement discussion.

Testing does not need to be complicated. Basic performance improvement trending and tracking methods generally suffice. For each aim you select, create a testing method by performing the following key actions:

• Identify who on your Change Team will be responsible for data collection, analysis, and presentation (generation of graphs and charts). Consider recruiting data analysis staff to help the Change Team.
• Identify a measure and define target ranges for that measure.
• Measure before and after you implement TeamSTEPPS to see whether the desired changes occurred.
• Keep it simple. Select one solid measure for each aim.
• If your Change Team uses any patient data, ensure that your plan adheres to all patient rights and privacy laws and regulations. Check with the responsible person or group in your organization about your plans if you are unsure.
• Use existing data sources whenever possible. Most healthcare settings routinely collect significant amounts of data required for institutional reports. Determine what data your facility or workspace already collects that you may be able to use.

Step 6: Develop an Implementation Plan

Develop a plan for training your staff on the TeamSTEPPS tools and strategies you plan to implement, and develop a plan for putting your TeamSTEPPS intervention into place.

• Determine the specific TeamSTEPPS tools you have identified for your intervention. Be focused and specific to facilitate the training process.
• Determine the staff members within a targeted unit or department who need to be trained and identify their specific training needs.
• Identify the instructors for each audience.
• Develop a training plan for each audience, including:
• Who will attend the training sessions.
• What specific TeamSTEPPS tools you will teach.
• When the training sessions will occur and for how long.
• Where the sessions will occur.
• How you will train (modality, such as virtual, in person, or blended; and method of training, tools, and supplies).
• Logistics such as schedules, equipment, impact of training on other operations, additional required resources, and notification of trainees and other key stakeholders.
• Determine how you will reinforce the initial training. Knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors all require review and positive reinforcement to be sustained. Unit or organization staff also change regularly. To achieve sustainable improvements, include reinforcement and refresher trainings as part of your plan.
• Create your training timelines. Include time for developing your materials and managing team communication and logistics.
• Determine whether and how members of the unit will be equipped to coach peers and help sustain your implementation plan. If you plan to use formal coaches, consider:
• How many are needed.
• When and how they will be trained.
• How they will be used, including expectations for the role.
• View implementation as an ongoing process, not a one-time event. While the initial training is critical, how you follow up and reinforce this training is just as essential.
• Model the behaviors you want staff to adopt. If members of the Change Team demonstrate their support for, and use of, tools and concepts you've taught, success is more likely.
• Listen, observe, and adapt. It's rare for implementation plans to succeed exactly as planned. A changed plan based on direct and indirect feedback your Change Team receives is much better than an unchanged plan that doesn't succeed.

Step 7: Develop a Sustainability Plan

Develop a sustainability plan for your TeamSTEPPS intervention that will proactively reinforce and maintain knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors and allow you to see whether the efforts are effective in meeting the aims.

• Assume that your efforts to produce change will not last unless they continue to be monitored and reinforced. Most organizational initiatives are short term and have few lasting effects. Staff recognize this situation and can readily dismiss TeamSTEPPS as another "flavor of the month" that will go away like many prior initiatives. The only way to prevent a TeamSTEPPS implementation from losing momentum is by proactively reinforcing TeamSTEPPS on a regular basis. Use data to show improvements in patient outcomes, and leverage the power of stories from staff and patients to help team members see the real-world impact of their efforts.
• Embed TeamSTEPPS concepts and tools into ongoing organizational processes and activities. If you make TeamSTEPPS HOW you do all your work, you can embed it into your culture. If it stays separate, it is less likely to be sustained. You can achieve this goal through:
• Conducting short refreshers in staff meetings.
• Celebrating successful uses of TeamSTEPPS tools that prevented a patient harm or made a team more efficient and satisfied.
• Providing spot bonuses related to TeamSTEPPS use.
• Incorporating TeamSTEPPS tools or concepts into orientation activities.
• Getting patients and family caregivers involved to reinforce their inclusion in teams providing them care. Module 4's discussion of mutual support includes concrete recommendations for involving patients and family caregivers. Sharing dashboards or other data with them is also recommended.
• Measure and monitor the process and outcome changes you've targeted. Key approaches include determining:
• Measures and target outcomes.
• Data source or sources (e.g., existing quality improvement database).
• Methods for data collection.
• Methods for data analysis and interpretation.
• Needed resources (money, time, equipment, personnel, expertise).
• People responsible for implementation and oversight.
• Integrate your TeamSTEPPS intervention into existing processes for long-term sustainability. Make it part of your unit's normal daily routines.
• Publicize your successes. Examples include displaying large wall charts in your workspace showing positive performance trends; writing articles in local publications and medical journals; and giving presentations on your results at staff meetings. Develop standardized procedures for integrating newly hired staff.

Step 8: Develop a Communications Plan

Use communication strategies targeting stakeholders to generate initial and ongoing support for the TeamSTEPPS initiative and promote the maintenance and spread of positive changes.

• Identify the stakeholders for the communications plan. Many stakeholders were probably identified in earlier planning steps and some will already be on the Change Team. The communications plan stakeholders are people or groups whose support will be important for achieving the aims of your intervention and for maintaining positive changes. They may be patient advocates, organization leaders, frontline leaders, staff directly involved in the intervention, patients, support staff, and other units affected by the intervention.
• Once stakeholders are identified, develop a communications plan, including:
• Goals for communication with each group. What do you want to achieve?
• Who will receive the information?
• What information will you communicate?
• When and how often will you communicate?
• How will you communicate (e.g., reports, presentations, emails)?
• Identify a person on the Change Team who will be responsible for implementation and oversight of the communications plan.
• Keep the plan as simple as possible. If time or resources are limited to implement a complex plan, a simple plan will be more realistic and successful.
• Stay focused on your goals for communication with each stakeholder group. Keep asking, "What do I hope to accomplish for the initiative (e.g., buy-in, resources, participation) by communicating with this group?" The goals will drive the development of your communications plan.

Step 9: Finalize Your TeamSTEPPS Implementation Plan and Timeline

Finalize your written implementation plan, based on steps 1 through 8, that will function as your "How-To Guide" for every component of your TeamSTEPPS initiative.

If you completed the activities in steps 1 through 8, you have already written your TeamSTEPPS implementation plan. Review the plan to be sure it includes the following elements:

• Identification of the Change Team
• Identification of the problem, challenge, or opportunity for improvement that will be the focus of the TeamSTEPPS initiative
• Stated aims of the TeamSTEPPS intervention
• Detailed description of the TeamSTEPPS intervention
• A plan for testing the effectiveness of the TeamSTEPPS intervention
• An implementation plan for both medical team training and the TeamSTEPPS intervention
• A monitoring plan for ongoing assessment of the effectiveness of the TeamSTEPPS intervention
• A communications plan to generate support for the TeamSTEPPS initiative, to keep major stakeholders informed of progress, and to maintain and spread positive changes
• Required resources
• If your organization uses standard approaches for developing implementation plans, incorporate the contents of steps 1-8 into that approach. This standard plan will be easier for staff and leadership to understand and will reinforce your efforts to embed TeamSTEPPS into existing work processes and organizational norms.
• If the plan seems too long or complex, it almost certainly is. A simpler plan that's more realistic and achievable is a better plan.
• Regularly review and modify your plan as needed. Plans often need to change. That is inevitable and not a planning failure.
• Don't get bogged down in details of later steps in your plan. Work out the details for initial steps because those are more important. You can adjust later steps in the future in time for them to be successfully implemented.
• Everyone is busy, so set a realistic timeline. (It will be difficult to work through all steps in one meeting.) Consider developing a 30-, 60-, or 90-day timeline and have deliverables that are achievable for the Change Team.

Step 10: Engage Key Stakeholders in the Creation, Monitoring, and Updates of Your Plan

Generate and sustain the support and ideas of key stakeholders and involve them in solving implementation challenges.

• Review the previously identified stakeholders to target those who could contribute significantly to the implementation plan. Consider patients and family caregivers or a member of your organization's patient and family advisory council, organization leaders, frontline leaders, people directly involved in the intervention, and personnel with special expertise such as facility data analysts.
• Involve these key stakeholders in the development, review, and updating of your implementation plan. Some of these should be on your Change Team throughout. Specifically request the help of these stakeholders in understanding challenges and developing ways to overcome them.
• Share data on process and outcome changes with key stakeholders on a regular basis. Doing so increases accountability and may identify solutions to challenges that are preventing targeted improvements.
• Actively involve patients in these discussions. Patient inclusion will reinforce the central aim of TeamSTEPPS, which is to keep them safe. Patients also have a perspective that's often overlooked and that can identify solutions staff may not have considered.
• Make stakeholder input easy and worthwhile. Stakeholders are busy, potentially experiencing burnout, and often have more responsibilities than time. Scheduling frequent or extended meetings may be counterproductive. If stakeholder input is elicited efficiently in forums they are already attending (e.g., staff meetings, grand rounds), they are more likely to stay engaged.

Internet Citation: Implementation Planning. Content last reviewed February 2024. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. https://www.ahrq.gov/teamstepps-program/curriculum/implement/activity/plan.html

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Your Career Doesn’t Need to Have a Purpose

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Focus on making your work meaningful instead.

Outside of popular anecdotes and social media stories, there is little evidence that a single, defined “purpose” is necessary for a rewarding career. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. It’s surprisingly common to go after what we think is our purpose only to discover that we hate it. Instead, shift your focus from “purpose” to “meaning.” Ask yourself:

• What do I like, prefer, or enjoy doing? Let go of yearning for a career purpose. Dial it back and consider what you liked about any of your previous jobs, school projects or other ways you spend your time. Perhaps you liked helping your peers organize their work or enjoyed researching sources for group projects. Or maybe you liked working on a team than alone. Use that as a starting point. 
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• Would this role provide growth and learning that I can use later? Research shows that what scholars call “ability development” (i.e. getting better at what you do) brings with it greater happiness, satisfaction, and meaning.

As an organizational studies professor at the Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Canada, I get the opportunity to help my students with various aspects of their career development. In the process, I’ve noticed two common threads. First, most of my students are not only eager to enter the world of work, but also to be excellent at what they do. Second, they want their post-graduation job to be loaded with purpose .

• Stephen Friedman is an Adjunct Professor of Organizational Studies and a Senior Faculty of Executive Education, at The Schulich School of Business, York University in Toronto. He teaches and writes about leadership development, organizational behavior, complexity science, career development, human resource management, workplace inclusion, and mental health.

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Morgan Stanley Equity Research: AI and Nvidia

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AI and Nvidia: Learn how professional stock analysts do their research, craft their thesis and pitch a stock, using a real world case studyEver wonder how AI has become the most talked about phenomenon in the stock market? Or why Nvidia is now one of the most valuable companies in the world? Please join members of the Morgan Stanley equity research division for an introduction to how professional stock analysts do their job, from crafting an investment thesis, to building models and valuing a stock. We’ll discuss an actual case study with associates on the internet and semiconductor research teams. Whether you are interested in a career in research, are an aspiring investor or just curious about life on Wall Street, we think you will get value out of this interactive session. Date: Monday, May 20th 2024Time: 5:00pm – 6:30pm ETLocation: Virtual Register here: AI and Nvidia: Learn how professional stock analysts do their research, craft their thesis and pitch a stock, using a real world case study – Morgan Stanley Campus (tal.net)Registration will close Wednesday, May 15th at 12:00pm ET

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