Hamilton and INSEAD recently released a report of their study about innovation and R&D practices. They surveyed R&D leaders in 186 companies in 19 nations in 2005. According to Strategy Business:

The survey results, and our own experience, suggest one central truth: Organizations benefit when they configure their innovation networks for cost and manage them for value. (...) the primary R&D challenges: assessing the value of new knowledge, encouraging cross-site and cross-functional collaboration, managing the complexity of global projects, and optimizing innovation footprints. They also emphasized that having a well-managed R&D network is becoming particularly advantageous as companies expand R&D beyond their home turf. Between 1975 and 2005, the survey found, the share of R&D sites located outside the markets of their corporate headquarters has risen from 45 percent to 66 percent. That share is likely to increase, with 77 percent of the R&D sites planned over the next three years slated for China or India.

Why do I blog this? since research and R&D more and more rely on networks, I find valuable to know more about how those networks are managed (internally in companies but also with external actors in other copmanies, public institutions or NGOs)