Abstract
This research addresses the problem of what to consider
as competence in research and development (R&D) and how
does it change in contractual projects. Two cases are
investigated, so called fault diagnosis systems and code
generation methods and tools. They involve the Technical
Research Centre of Finland (VTT) as a supplier and
several companies as customers. Projects established by
these parties from 1985 to 1998 have been analysed, to
study how the supplier's competence evolves. The research
is based on the analysis of several thousand pages of
documents and interviews of some fifty persons. The
change of competence is evaluated and explained within
project-based relationships called project nets.
Differing objectives and goals of the interacting parties
are found to greatly affect project nets, and thereby the
evolution of the supplier's competence.
In the code generation case, the focal VTT managers aimed
at creating a versatile portfolio of fully contractual
projects, for machine automation applications in
particular. The approach did not work as intended. The
code generation researchers produced design methods and
tools that were, in the end, mostly utilised inside VTT -
which neither benefited the contractual R&D business of
VTT, nor resulted in explicit core competence. In the
fault diagnosis case contractual projects were, however,
used to create what can be considered as core competence
of VTT as an R&D supplier.
Still, even the code generation competence survived
through many years and conflicting viewpoints to form a
basis of business - not for VTT, but for some of the
original inventors. This indicates both the key role of
individuals in R&D and the need for strategic management
of evolving competence. Development of functional
capabilities to solve problems in certain applications is
found in this research to be essential for the building
of core competence of an R&D supplier. Flexible use of
generic engineering techniques and implementation
technologies is also important. However, this depends on
how skilled customers are in this regard.
The final part of the dissertation is devoted to the
question of how to manage competence, based on the
empirical insights of the research. The goal is to help
pave the way for strategic relationship-based competence
management in contractual R&D.
Original language | English |
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Qualification | Doctor Degree |
Awarding Institution |
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Supervisors/Advisors |
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Award date | 10 Nov 2000 |
Place of Publication | Espoo |
Publisher | |
Print ISBNs | 951-38-5577-5 |
Electronic ISBNs | 951-38-5578-3 |
Publication status | Published - 2000 |
MoE publication type | G4 Doctoral dissertation (monograph) |
Keywords
- core competence
- customer relationships
- R&D management
- industrial networks
- software engineering
- fault diagnosis
- code generation
- electronics industry