3. Identify and cultivate your change agents

"Researchers are a dime a dozen, but finders are a dime a dozen. This phrase, attributed to General de Gaulle, expresses both the hopes and fears of infertility associated with R&D. In fact, R&D is the victim of tenacious prejudices, which can fuel epidermal rejection in organizations that do not practice it.

Researchers are knowledge professionals, having completed at least one full cycle of research (doctoral thesis), for whom the research process is a natural frame of reference for thought and action: in fact, a researcher always finds! Nevertheless, the results and scope of his work are not always considerable, visible or immediately applicable; in the case of R&D, the researcher "finds", i.e. proposes new options or opportunities useful to the company, if he is correctly "enslaved" in the mechanism described above.

To design,...