Research is about change. And so when researchers study research, why shouldn't the traditional model also be modified to fit more appropriately into a changing environment. That's what's revealed in a recent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on "How R&D is changing in the telecommunications sector today." The traditional model of R&D is viewed as one where new products are developed within a closed environment and guarded to protect the intellectual property (IP) of the funding organization.
The new model, however, is one the report refers to as "open innovation"—a concept discussed by Harvard Professor Henry Chesbrough—that engages suppliers, corporate partners, academia, and customers in the R&D process. This team approach to R&D is especially relevant to the telecom industry, where technological changes occur more rapidly than in most other industries.
Globalization is likely to modify this concept in other ways, as 24/7 operations and IP concerns and protection expand. In the telecom environment, R&D change is likely to have an ongoing role as was noted in news reports earlier this week about the restructuring of China's telecom environment where the government is likely to combine several current telecom organizations into a singular larger organization that is more likely to be competitive with long-standing telecom organizations in the U.S. and Europe.
Missing in the EIU report is the role that the changing regulatory environment is likely to have on the future overall industry. Also missing are specific technology issues like the universal role that wireless is likely to have or the role that embedded systems will have. Technology itself is likely to have a very major role in the research model as future telecom systems are surgically and biologically embedded into the body. Another change not mentioned in the EIU report is how embedded computational capabilities in the telecom networks themselves will likely change the overall structure of telecom research.
None of these changes make any mention of the financial structuring of the telecom environment as new players enter and the actual customer becomes an more integral component in the hardware loop rather than just a client. That financial structure will also have to change in ways probably too complex to even contemplate right now.
