COORDINATING RESEARCH-AND-DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING

The main reason of commercial failure of new product developments is that the R&D is carried out without adequate guidance concerning the market needs. For success, R&D and marketing must work as partners in developing new products though depending upon the industry either R&D or marketing may be more equal than the other. To achieve effective coordination between the two wings there are three areas of weaknesses that need to be corrected: (a) weaknesses in R&D (unilateral selection of R&D tasks; domination of R&D by marketing); (b) weaknesses in marketing (the absence of a real marketing department as opposed to a sales department); (c) weaknesses in the relations between R&D and marketing departments. The distinction between sales and marketing functions is important. Whereas sales represents the existing product lines, marketing in a sense represents the customer. Thus while sales is not a natural ally in innovation, marketing is or can be. Approaches to rectify the weaknesses in the three areas are discussed, particularly approaches for making R&D people more commercially oriented; for improving marketing people's analytical skills and for improving communication skills to mesh technical capabilities and market needs.