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| Table 3 Measures of Productivity and Success | | Effectiveness: Doing the right thing | | Efficiency: Doing the thing right | | Quality: Doing it best | | Innovation: Doing it smart | | Integrity: Telling it right and hearing it right | | Source: Ref. [15]. |
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amount of money a company spends on R & D should then be allocated to achieve success in these strategic areas, where the right people are working on the right projects. |
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Selecting the right people for the right job is critical; no amount of money can compensate for a poor quality scientific staff and skills that are inappropriately matched with projects [14]. When recruiting new personnel and reassigning existing staff, motivation and perseverance are the two most important characteristics to achieve success [16]. Perseverance is an inherent trait that should be used as a key selection criterion when recruiting new employees and should be a prime consideration when assigning resources to particularly difficult projects. Motivation is also an inherent trait. Although self-motivated individuals are more likely to be successful, motivation is strongly reinforced by success. In the absence of success, perseverance is the only force that will keep the company on course. |
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Identifying new product candidates comes from selecting the right research projects. To maximize the chances for success, though, research must be channeled in a balanced way along two lines: one that is consistent with the strategic goals of the company and one that encourages scientists to pursue intellectual challenges which emerge from their ongoing research. The first approach is pragmatic but guarantees a product portfolio with commercial value consistent with the corporate goals. The second approach stimulates scientific thinking to keep the portfolio from becoming trivial and shallow; these can sometimes provide solutions to problems unexpectedly [13,17]. Throwing money at research aimlessly does not shorten the discovery of new drugs or improve the likelihood of success. To receive management approval for either research approach, an attractive research idea should be presented as a proposal, which should include an hypothesis, rationale, a plan for testing the hypothesis, and a timetable for decision points. It is the responsibility of management to ensure that funds are available for both research approaches, but they must be based on sound proposals. |
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