Robin Williams, R&D Consulting

Williams provides consulting services for companies and government agencies who wish to transform their R&D operations to become more effective.  He has met dozens of customers and has discussed their R&D programs and processes, and explained IBM's to them.   Based on these interactions, he developed many presentations, listened to their feedback and wrote a book on the subject.  He offers this experience to others.  He offers patent expertise and is working with two large global companies. 

Offerings can range from short to long term.  Short term engagements are based on presentations and discussions, while longer term involvements would also include interviews with company executives and technical leaders,  summaries and feedback, continued monitoring and measurement of any process changes and other continued assistance.  Services apply to both large and small companies as well as government agencies.

Subject matters include the transformations of research itself, its organization and the many ways to do research, its mission, strategies, planning, project execution and measurements, rewards, recruiting and motivating researchers, and why some institutions have succeeded (very few) and others have failed over the long haul.  IBM Research for example has transformed itself at least 4 times in the last 50 years.

Dr. Williams is associated with Delphus, Inc.   www.delphus.com 

In the foreword of Williams' book,  Stephen Trilling, VP of Research and Advanced Development, Semantec Corporation, says:

Drawing on his years of experience in managing leading-edge innovations at IBM Research, Dr. Williams describes in a step-by-step fashion the nuts and bolts of successfully managing and commercializing research projects.   Dr. Williams covers all aspects of commercial innovation processes, from recruiting and hiring researchers, to managing and measuring research projects, to interacting with customers, to building a predictive long-term outlook for your business no matter how large or small that business might be. 

“Rigorous”. “Repeatable”.  “Measurable”.  Those words may not sound quite so exciting as "Inspiration”, or “Revelation”, or “Flash of Genius”.  Yet, they hold the key to successful long-term innovation; they also embody the essence of how this book can help research leaders bring their visions to fruition.  I have searched long, hard, and unsuccessfully for such a book during my career leading research projects.