We help our clients achieve the best possible use of their research and development (R&D) budgets:

• By building effective "win-win" collaborations to benefit from available external R&D resources. 
• By optimizing the deployment of their own in-house R&D resources.

Our consultants all have advanced degrees, decades of experience, and proven track records in their fields of expertise.  Many of them are recognized globally in their fields of expertise.  Several of them have spent many years of their careers as technical project managers and senior technical leaders.  They know how to make the best possible use of resources that are available externally as well as how to build cohesive and high-performing teams within a given organization.

Please contact us now at (989)631-9237 or info@polymerexpert.biz or use our online form to discuss your technical project management needs.  The first consultation session is always provided free of charge.

If you prefer to learn more about what we do and how we do it before you contact us, please see the further information provided below.

External R&D

Technological development and globalization have accelerated tremendously during the last two decades, producing increasing competition and causing the old Research and Development (R&D) paradigm (where a company has a self-contained R&D organization) to become inefficient.  Regardless of the breadth and depth of R&D within any company, there is always more knowledge, technology, and other relevant R&D resources outside of it.  The “not invented here” mindset is no longer acceptable in the struggle to achieve a sustainable competitive edge.  While the validity of these statements is most obvious for small companies with limited internal R&D resources, they are also valid for huge corporations with massive R&D organizations.  

The commercial success ot a company of any size can be aided by its judicious use of available External R&D resources residing in universities, national laboratories, and other nonprofit organizations.  There is a growing awareness of this fact in the industrial world.  Governments in many parts of the world (including the USA, the European Union, and Japan) are providing major incentives to encourage industrial-academic collaborations as a result of their growing awareness of the social and economic benefits of such collaborations.  Furthermore, universities, national laboratories, and other nonprofit organizations are showing a growing awareness of the benefits of working with industry in terms of helping achieve their own missions.  As a result of all these factors, the External R&D efforts of corporations have been growing rapidly during the last two decades, in parallel to the increasingly fierce competition.  

A well-structured External R&D interaction can provide a cost-effective mechanism by which a corporation can gain access (if and when needed, and as long as needed) to valuable R&D resources that would be too expensive to duplicate in-house, and to knowledge and technology that may simply be unavailable in-house.  Another benefit of External R&D is in helping a company recruit highly qualified new R&D personnel, since it is able to evaluate a student involved in a collaboration over a prolonged period in a real-life project setting rather than relying mainly on  performance during a formal job interview.  In return, a university or other nonprofit organization may gain the benefits of funding from the company, as well as enrichment of the background and experience of its students and other personnel by exposure to practical industrial problems and to work in an industrial environment. 

The keys to the successful leveraging of External R&D resources are the identification of resources that can best help meet the needs of a particular business, the assessment of optimum modes of partnership (consulting, cooperative research, industrial internships for students, etc.), the negotiation of terms for all aspects of the partnership (ranging from financial arrangements to intellectual property assignments), and the monitoring of the resulting interactions to ensure that they remain on track.  

We help our clients in setting up and monitoring External R&D interactions.  The extent of our involvement is determined by the needs and wishes of the client.  We use our extensive network of contacts in universities and national laboratories, as well as our familiarity with the state-of-the art in polymer and composite science and technology, to identify External R&D resources for our clients.  We work with our clients in planning their External R&D partnerships, ensuring that the collaboration is a true “win-win” partnership.  Finally, we monitor the External R&D partnerships to ensure that they remain on track. 

Internal R&D

We help our clients develop a better understanding of the critical technical issues that need to be addressed and the obstacles that must be surmounted by their project teams in order to achieve success.  This improved understanding produces greater clarity regarding the skill sets that need to be available within a project team, as well as any additional resources and support that the team may need.  If requested by our client, we also help the team in the detailed planning and monitoring of the project.

We also help our clients recruit new employees with needed skills.  Hiring with the help of B&A costs far less than hiring with the help of a recruiting firm.  B&A only bills its clients a consulting fee for the amount of time we spent in the hiring effort, plus (only if our recruiting effort was successful, when the new employee reports to work) a "finder's fee" of $ 1000, while a recruiting firm normally charges a commission equal to a substantial percentage of the first-year salary of the new employee.