R & D AND ITS IMPORTANCE

1
R&D
1. Different motives
• Organisations – to make better profits
• To solve practical problems
• To satisfy curiosity
• To improve the lot of mankind (health or riches)
• Maintain defense of the country
• Improve the environment
• To support a desire for prestige – personal, corporate, national
It has become a big business in recent years
In Great Britain, R & D absorbs > 2% of GNP
Recent pressure built up for universities and polytechnics
to make available courses based on the principles involved
2
University Research
2. Importance
Importance of university research to an R & D organisation
outside the university:
• Can give the initial indications of what are likely to be
important scientific ideas worthy of eventual development and
application
• People also can present knowledgeable but fresh minds to the
problems of an organisation
• More research meant more and more productivity and
profitability for organisations

3
l Technological innovation, often fueled by government-
led R & D has been the driving force for industrial
growth around the world
l The best opportunities to improve living standards –
including new ways of reducing poverty – will come
from science and technology.
l Countries unable to access, generate, and apply relevant
scientific knowledge will fall even further behind.
l Technological base
– the availability of skilled human resources,
– the number of scientific and technical articles published,
– the competitive edge countries enjoy in hi-technology exports,
sales and purchases of technology through royalties and licenses,
– the number of patent applications filed, and
– trademarks issued.
4
3. Malaysia’s Vision 2020 and R & D
l Malaysia aims to be a developed nation by 2020 using its
own method
l Currently efforts are made to narrow the ethnic income
gap through:
– Creation of opportunities
– Closer parity of social services and infrastructure
– Development of appropriate economic cultures
– Full human resources development
l Need to double GDP every 10 years, with average annual
growth of 7%

5
Need for competitive economy
l able to sustain itself over the longer term, dynamic, robust
and resilient. Meaning ….
• A diversified and balanced economy with a mature and
widely based industrial sector,
• a modern and mature agriculture and services sectors;
• an economy that is able to quickly adapt to changing
patterns of supply, demand and competition;
• an economy that is technologically proficient, fully able
to adapt, innovate and invent, that is increasingly
technology intensive, moving in the direction of higher
and higher levels of technology;
• an economy that has strong and cohesive industrial
linkages;
6
8
To integrate the MSC into the Malaysian economy, various
‘flagship’ projects were established to demonstrate the
benefits of linking up with Malaysia’s IT hub. These
flagship projects were:
• The development of a multipurpose card
• The development of telemedicine
• The beginning of electronic government
• Building a research and development cluster
• Establishing smart schools
• Promoting a worldwide manufacturing web
• Borderless marketing.

9
• In December 1997, the MSC launched a scheme that
provided MSC Status to local and foreign institutions
of higher learning.
• On application, and with the approval of the
Malaysian government, MSC status could be
conferred on local tertiary institutions provided that
their mission included significant IT training, would
encourage a growth in the supply of local IT
knowledge workers and contribute to the
development of Malaysia as an IT educational hub.

10
4. R & D in the Medical Sector
• The focus is usually on problem-oriented research
directed at finding ways to fill gaps between
knowledge and its applications in solving persistent
health concerns.

11
5. Activities of a Typical R & D Establishment
• Pure research – to understand basis of certain activities
of organisation (eg. distillation in an oil firm)
• Explanatory research (and mission oriented research)
• Discover new products within the framework of the
organisation’s responsibilities
• Test the feasibility of practical use of a discovery
• Improve the efficiency of an organisation’s existing
operations
• Change the base of an industrial or other efforts (eg.
Petro-chemical, atomic explosives)
• Solve the problems of raw material shortages, energy
restrictions, pollution from the firm’s operations.
12
• Development – for bringing to fruition or optimising any of the
objectives of technological research
• Application of existing scientific knowledge to the problems of
the organisation
• Extra-mural activities
• Research carried out at universities, research associations,
sponsored research institutes
• Research taken in from outside organisations
• Maintaining contact with research associations,
universities, consultants, government departments.

13
6. Cost of Research
• Cost of research – varies from government research,
industrial research and research associations
• Extent and sophistification of facilities and research aids,
number of assistants (technical and industrial), and
overheads involved.

14
7. Problems
• Scarcity of science graduates
• Severity of questions of the costs of research (nationally, and
individual organisations)
• Application and technological research is not sufficiently fast or
effective to meet the needs of a technological society – creates
doubts about the correlation between research and inventions
and about research as the road to industrial growth.
• Allocation for research is still low
• Research publications in SCI and SSCI use only English as
medium, reducing further the knowledge divide
• Lack of continuity in life-long learning efforts
• Lack of knowledge of importance of R & D among young
graduates
15
Source: World Bank (2002), World Development Indicators 16
World Bank (2003), World Development Report: Sustainable Development
ina Dynamic World.