Innovation, Research and Development Management

6Performance Management in R&D

The concept of economic performance is important to a company. As Lorino [LOR 03, p. XI] recalls: “it involves creating value for customers, which includes meeting needs (by possibly generating new needs for innovation), under satisfactory conditions of cost, time and quality. Performance management incorporates all orientation and control activities aimed at achieving the desired level of ‘performance’”.

To address this subject, we first have to understand what the concept of performance and performance management is all about as well as identify performance challenges in research and development. This will be the purpose of the first part. To discuss what is meant by performance management in this area, we will then focus, more specifically, on R&D departments’ management control, followed by that of innovation projects. We will conclude with reflections on the limits of rationalization of control in R&D.

6.1. Performance in R&D

6.1.1. A hard to define concept

In general, though performance is central in management, and perhaps because of that, this concept is yet to be given a single definition. Bourguignon [BOU 95] talks of the polysemy of the term “performance” and the debates around such a concept. Performance is success, but the representation of success is relative. What does success mean in R&D? In design activities, an invention does not always lead to an innovation (the positive sanction of the invention user), that is, for example, ...