Fourth-generation R&D: From linear models to flexible innovation

The management of research and development has evolved through four different phases. The first two ones involved linear flows of knowledge. From its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century to the 1950s, it was based on serendipity and somehow isolated from the other Junctions of the firm, in the 1950s and 1960s, it adopted the basic routines of project management. In the 1970s and early 1980s, business development groups appeared within the firm, to coordinate different functions and assure a multi-directional flow of information. In the late 1980s and 1990s, technological alliances with users, suppliers and competitors increase the non-linear flows by incorporating information generated outside the firm. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.