Organizational Memory
Research & development card, MethodKit for Memory & Reminiscence
Card 54 of 66 · MethodKit for Memory & Reminiscence
  • ThemeStrategy & Direction
  • CardCard 54 of 66
  • Questions5 to explore
Strategy & Direction

Research & development

Initiatives & development of what's to come

Research and development work is where the organization's future is being shaped, and it is almost never adequately documented.

R&D knowledge is among the most time-sensitive in any organization. The thinking behind an experiment, the reasons a particular approach was chosen, the results that came out of a prototype run: all of it is vivid and clear while the work is happening and genuinely difficult to reconstruct six months later. The habit of capturing it as it develops is much less expensive than trying to recover it after the fact.

For growing organizations, R&D documentation also matters for continuity. When a researcher or developer leaves, what they take with them is not just skills but the accumulated context behind years of decisions. Some of that context can be written down; the more of it that is, the smaller the gap.

The goal is not exhaustive records of every experiment. It is a living picture of what is currently being explored, why, what has been learned so far, and where things stand, kept current enough to be useful to someone who was not in the room.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

Active initiatives

What is currently being researched or developed, the goals behind each initiative, and who is responsible for driving it forward.

Findings & learnings

What has been discovered through R&D work, including results that changed direction, experiments that failed, and conclusions that have shaped the product or strategy.

Pipeline & priorities

What is in the pipeline for future exploration and how priorities are set, so the rationale behind the current focus is visible rather than assumed.

External inputs

Research partnerships, academic relationships, external data sources, and other inputs that feed into the R&D process, including key contacts and how those relationships work.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

  1. What is currently being researched or developed, and where is that information written down?

  2. When a project ends, where do the findings go, and who can access them later?

  3. Which R&D efforts in the organization's history have had the biggest impact, and is that story documented?

  4. How are R&D priorities set, and does the documentation reflect the reasoning behind current priorities?

  5. What would be lost if the people leading each current initiative left tomorrow?

Things to notice

  • R&D notes tend to live in individual notebooks, local drives, or experiment-specific tools that are not accessible to the rest of the organization.
  • Negative results, including experiments that did not work, are the most frequently undocumented findings and often the most useful to preserve.
  • When R&D and product or strategy teams are separate, the knowledge transfer between them is often informal and prone to loss.