6.6.3 Personnel - internal and outsourcing

People are the most important factor in product development. There are the core team members and there is the greater team, including support groups. A great variety of knowledge and skills is required and this needs to be integrated into a complex network supporting the product development. There is no question today that the linear progression from science to innovation has changed into an interdisciplinary relationship (Ganguly, 1999) as shown in Fig. 6.11.

Fig. 6.11 Relationships among science, technology and innovation.
(- click to enlarge)

There are four important factors in the network:

    1. Integration of the sciences.

    2. Integration of the technologies in the total technology.

    3. Interaction of the science and technology continuously.

    4. Interaction of the science and technology in innovation.

The physical and mathematical sciences are part of all technology, in combination with chemistry and biology in process technology and with social sciences in total technology. The science can be developed separately but often is developed as part of the technology. Technology often cannot wait for the results of the basic science research but has to do the research to solve a basic technology problem. This is true in all areas, for example consumer research cannot wait for research in the social sciences but has to do the research now to solve the consumer problem. So basic research can be in technology as well as in science. Interaction also occurs in the other direction, basic science can come from a theoretical problem but often it comes from a problem identified in the science environment, which includes technology. The latter is often called strategic science, as it has a direction.

Therefore in the innovation process there is a continuous interaction between the development of the product and the science and technology. This interdisciplinary network, which vibrates backwards and forwards during the development, presents a very complex personnel management problem - in selection of people both outside and inside the company with the necessary knowledge, skills and creativity, and then coordinating them into a vibrant, interacting, communicating network. The company needs to have the ability to sustain a leading-edge competence over long periods (Ganguly, 1999), by selecting and educating staff, by careful selection of the outside personnel and building a relationship with them. Sometimes to solve a problem that has arisen, there may be a need to bring in an outside agency or consultant; but to be of value for the people in the network, the agency needs to have knowledge and understanding of the company. All this seems to fly in the face of the company's perceived need for secrecy in innovation, and has led to an increase in intellectual property agreements.

The networks can be inside the company and also connecting the company personnel to academics, technical consultants, research associations, consumer and market research companies, and innovation management consultants. There has been an increasing interaction of academic and government research with industrial research in companies, often encouraged by government organisations and grants. In all Western countries, the increasing need for these networks has been recognised because technology has been progressing so fast that it is difficult for companies to stay ahead. This also happened in the middle to the end of the nineteenth century in Scotland, during the Industrial Revolution, when the communication between academics and industrial technologists was not only close but their work was interrelated. In a time of fast innovation, academic research can get behind industrial research, and industry can be left with basic research problems, which cannot be solved in the time available. As the major problems cannot be solved, product development can make only small incremental changes; this can result in stagnation of the company and perhaps death. This stresses the importance of the interaction between the company research and external research to maintain the rate of innovation. Box 6.2 illustrates some academic and government research with possible applications.

Box 6.2 Application briefs from the Journal of Food Science Better rice formulated with vitamin A A process for enhancing the content of rice with retinyl palmitate, a particularly effective vitamin A precursor, was studied by researchers at the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of Georgia. The process was donated in 1997 to the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health by the Coxes of Washington State, who owned the patent. Broken rice is milled into rice flour, combined with a binder and retinyl palmitate and other fortificants, and reformed into rice grains with the same texture as whole rice grains. These are blended with conventional long grained rice at a ratio of 99 : 1. The present study showed that the retinyl palmitate was quite stable under various cooking procedures. When stored at 23°C for 6 months, 85% of the retinyl palmitate was retained, but at 35°C there were extensive losses, 50% after 24 weeks. Under tropical conditions, this means either the use of controlled temperature storage or rapid turnover or increased levels of fortification to compensate for the loss. Reconfiguring the fatty acid profiles of dairy foods In 1970's it was found that by feeding cows a source of high oleic fatty acids, milk with higher levels of oleic acid can be produced. High oleic sunflower oil and canola grain are now available as cattle feed additives and make possible the commercial production of milk with higher levels of oleic acid. Researchers from the Universities of Florida and Virginia Tech have studied cheese making with this milk. By consuming calcium salts of high oleic sunflower oil containing 86% oleic acid, test animals produced milk in which the high oleic fatty acids in the milkfat increased from 26% to over 40%. Latin American white cheese (queso blanco) was made from the milk, and tested for firmness and for sensory differences from conventional cheese made by the same method. No differences were found in firmness, sensory testing showed no significant differences between the cheeses. Latin American white cheeses made with high oleic milk were similar to traditional cheeses. Source: Reprinted from Journal of Food Science 65(5): iv, v, © Institute of Food Technologists, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 2000.