I work in research and development for a technology company. I’ve been in an R&D division since the mid 90’s. I work with some of the most intelligent and skilled people that one could imagine. These people are from the top universities and have created dozens of inventions making life better for countless millions of people.

There are many things that I will write on the topic of research, development and innovation in this blog, but in this post I want to bring out the concept of learning. We in R&D are professional learner’s, we are paid to learn for our company. We learn then invent on behalf of the company.

All of this learning has taught me several valuable insights, (besides all of the technology and science). Four of these insights are listed below.

1. There must be a proper environment created for learning.
2. There are private learning curves and corporate learning curves and they are very different.
3. The faster the private learning’s become corporate learning’s the more efficient the R&D organization will be.
4. An early stage organization may pay several times for the same learnings without good management.

Management of the learning, teaching and collaboration processes is critical in R&D. When I see attitudes in universities and industry where information is siloed with insecure scientists and engineers I know that is contrary to efficient innovation. It is wastefulness on display; it’s the opposite of what is needed for quality innovation. To have the attitude of the insecure scientist who conceals learning’s from the competition is contrary to what needs to happen in the learning industry of research and development.

An efficient research and development organization is one that both learns and teaches, that is our trade and those with attitudes or behavior contrary to that should consider changing fields.

Are you in the reseach industry?