Have you ever seen new products that arrive too late on the market, costs of development that overrun and new products that do not offer real value to the customer?
Well, one of the root causes are the conflicts between marketing and R&D.
I think everybody agrees that effective coordination between various groups in the organization, such as R&D, marketing, and engineering plays an important role in the process of developing a medical device.
However, the reality is that an effective and harmonious relationship is the exception rather than the rule.
Problems related to poor inter-functional cooperation, communication, lack of clarity of goal and inadequate definition of project responsibilities, are frequent in any kind of organization. And you do not need to be a brilliant manager to know that poor cooperation between marketing and R&D lead to weak new product development processes.
Why do Marketing And R&D Need To Work Together?
Below, I have listed some trends that are impacting our industry heavily, and supporting the need for a more productive and constructive relationship between marketing and R&D.
Focus on new product: The product development process in medtech is long and continues to lengthen. Conversely, the product life cycle is shortened; therefore, the need to launch new successful products keeps increasing significantly.
Competition: The increased competition produces 2 effects which are the pressure to launch first or among the firsts. And me-too products that are eroding the market share of consolidated products.
Regulatory requirements: The economic burden due to regulatory requirements is growing and regulations across the globe become more stringent, year after year; thereby, making access to the market more complicated and expensive.
Product complexity: The complexity of the product creates the need for new and more advanced technical and market competences in every organization.
Customer satisfaction: Customer satisfaction is becoming crucial in every industry. In the medical device sector, this trend is even more complex due to the different categories of possible customers such as surgeons, caregivers, buyers, patients, etc.
Furthermore, Customer expectations are evolving and products with poor performance, modest features and bad customer service have and will have no space in the market.
Price and value: The good old days when a company could launch a new product resulting from an incremental innovation and still have a premium price are definitively gone.
In today’s cost-conscious medical technology market, new products must deliver strong value to the customers.
Some Personally-Seen Marketing And R&D Conflicts Causes
There are infinite reasons why marketing and R&D do not get along well; I have identified some that are related to conflicts I’ve personally seen.
Academic background: Marketing professionals are frequently trained in business school whereas R&D people normally have an engineering background. This creates a diverse approach to the world and different perspectives on professional challenges.
Language: R&D and marketing do not speak the same language frequently; because both departments have their proper technical language. Hence, misunderstanding occurs especially because marketing tends to use the customer language, while R&D tends to use a more technical language.
An example of this is the user requirements definition, though defined by marketing, if they are not well understood by the R&D team, and well translated in design specifications, they will lead to problems in the development process.
Personality: Stereotypes exist for a reason; they are to some extent real. In some situations, marketing and R&D personnel seem to come from different planets.
Intrinsic motivation, and needs, are distant. While marketing is looking forward to rewards and career advancements, R&D is motivated by autonomy and research.
Structure: Functional organizations favor specialization and efficiency. How success is measured and incentivized in marketing and R&D is different. Examples include: market performance sales, market share for the marketing organization and process performance, on time and on budget projects, certifications, patents for R&D.
Physical distance: It is not uncommon, especially in multinationals, to have Marketing and R&D located in different facilities.
All forms of separations decrease face to face meetings, informal meetings and sharing of information. On the other hand, it increases the development of a different language, perception of different goals and the sense of belonging to a diverse community, inside the same organization.
What Are The 2 Major Forms Of Conflict Between Marketing And R&D?
There are 2 forms of conflicts: functional (kind of normal) and dysfunctional (very serious); however, identifying the setting is the first step to put measures in place.
Functional conflict: the functional form of conflict is characterized by disagreement, challenging of ideas, hypothesis, beliefs, practices, and assumptions in a constructive way.
Typical symptoms are the ability to solve disagreement without external support, sharing of resources, dissent is openly displayed, problems are often considered mutual and there is at least recognition of other’s role and expertise.
Dysfunctional conflict: this conflict is unhealthy for the organization and individuals. It is normally associated with poor (individual or team) performance.
Typical symptoms are lack of communication, withholding of information (even misleading information), hostility, tensions, difficult decision making, solving disagreements involving senior management, the teams see each other as competitors, blaming for failure is normal and there is no recognition of the other’s role and expertise.
These 2 types of conflicts need a different approach and particular tools; however, integration between marketing, R&D and the mechanisms to support it are useful in both cases.
What Is Marketing And R&D Integration?
In general, between marketing and R&D, integration can be considered as working jointly toward a common objective, such as a new product.
I found this definition of marketing and R&D integration to be very useful and inspiring: “the magnitude of interaction and communication, the level of information sharing, the degree of coordination, and the extent to which marketing and R&D have a common vision and collective goals during a NPD project”.
This definition identifies the different degrees of integration starting from interaction, communication, information sharing and coordination, to common vision and collective goals that imply collaboration, cooperation and a higher level of integration.
Mechanisms to increase integration
Proximity: relocation and facilities design everything that will increase physical proximity between the 2 departments increases formal and informal communication, helping to achieve more integration.
Personnel recruitment strategies: Hiring marketing professionals with a technical background or engineers with some sales and marketing experience to have more diverse teams, reduces distance and increases interaction and communication flow.
Social activities: organizing social activities creates a social network between the 2 organizations facilitating information flow and collaboration.
Incentives and rewards: rewarding team effort or having joint goals and related incentives increases the development of a joint behavior toward a common objective and encourages cooperation.
Formal organizational structure: Creating cross-functional teams that are responsible for the development project, naturally produces information exchange, cooperation, conflict resolution and at the end increases integration.
Processes: Phase review boards, steering committee, where managers from different functional areas review the different phases of new product development, form the basis for integrated processes. Cross-functional boards provide an effective way to solve cross-functional conflicts.
ICT: I think the Covid -19 pandemic has taught everybody the potential of ICT. New ICT expedites communication in several ways, and this result may have important implications for the marketing – R&D interface.
Conclusion And Managerial Implication
Functional conflicts between marketing and R&D are ordinary, nevertheless, senior management should put in place measures to reduce them through integration.
Marketing and R&D both play a critical role in product development in our industry, and I firmly believe that the best results in product development are generated by an appropriate level of integration between the 2 functions.
The list of the mechanisms is not completed and is not a panacea to solve all the problems in this area. The suggestions presented may seem obvious, however, if integration can replace the silos, then the enhanced relationship between marketing and R&D can make a company’s product development process much more successful.
What do you think about Marketing and R&D conflicts? Share your thoughts in the section below and if you like the content of this blog don’t forget to subscribe.
thanks Cesare, you continue to share your knowledge and create a working healthy discussion e-coffee room! will keep reading as much as i can. May be worth describing or adding the definition of `R&D` and `Marketing` teams.
Thank you for your comment, Juan.
I consider the R&D in a medical device company the department responsible for the new product development involved in concept generation, product design, product engineering, prototyping, testing, documentation, etc.
The marketing department is responsible for the upstream marketing the process of identifying and fulfilling customer needs to develop successful new product and downstream marketing which involve promotion, communicating with customers through several channels, brand building, advertising, promotion, the marketing mix, etc. These activities are fundamental but they increase the acceptance of an existing product.