The world of business must constantly reinvent itself in reaction to new technologies and developments. Companies have to be quick to react to ensure they don’t fall behind their competitors and remain relevant with each emerging trend.

Technological developments like AI and the blockchain have seen businesses scramble to understand the new capabilities that these technologies offer so that they can incorporate them into their operations.

Within this rapidly changing landscape, Research and Development (R&D) has emerged as an increasingly important tool for all companies who want to keep up with, or stay ahead of, their competitors.

It can bring a scientific approach to industrial challenges, questioning existing knowledge systems and established ways of working in pursuit of new perspectives and solutions.

Successful R&D efforts and programs can lead to the development of new products and services, the enhancement of existing ones, or entirely new ways to utilise technologies.

This in turn creates a host of benefits to those companies, including increasing their competitive advantage and market share, developing their intellectual property, and ultimately leading to efficiency gains and revenue growth.

Traditionally however R&D is seen as a rich-man’s game. Small companies and SMEs simply lack the available resources to invest into R&D in the same manner a multinational or FTSE100 company can.

For example, a technology giant like Microsoft or Meta may have a dedicated team working on R&D that is bigger than the entire workforce of a tech company which has been in operation for only a few years. This imbalance of resources restricts smaller companies from taking advantage of the benefits that R&D offers.

However, there is support available to smaller companies who want to include R&D within their operations but lack the necessary resources.

Many organisations, particularly in the UK, offer Fellowships and similar programmes which are intended to support companies with these challenges. One example of this is the Industrial Fellowships offered by the Royal Commission.

Although these programmes can take many different forms, the core premise of an Industrial Fellowship is to facilitate mutually beneficial collaborative research and work between the worlds of academia and industry; academics, industrialists, and graduates undertake their research projects within an industrial environment that is related to their area of research.

In short, the academic serves in a R&D role on behalf of the company they are working with, whilst also furthering their own career and contributing to academic knowledge.

Fellowships are designed to support new collaborations and therefore offer a great way to enhance personal and corporate networks, whilst also promoting mobility of talented scientists and engineers between industry and academia.

This helps to bring  academic knowledge and methodology into industrial environments, which can facilitate  the development of new solutions. Moreover, they bring in vital new funding for smaller companies which is then ringfenced for R&D and innovation.

In our Fellowships, Fellows undertake their PhD projects in collaboration with their university and a company who work within their area of research.

This dynamic creates the dual benefit of creating new research that furthers academic knowledge on a particular subject, the findings of which then serve as a practical solution or development for the company that they can help grow the company’s offering.

Ultimately, undertaking R&D through Fellowships is massively beneficial for smaller companies. It allows them to harness the power of R&D whilst sharing the cost. Through taking advantage of the wealth of expertise, knowledge, and passion of the world of academia, as well as their alternative and new perspective on issues, smaller companies are then better placed to compete with massive corporations in the pursuit of new and innovative products, services, and technologies.

This approach can help to address the market inequalities that currently exist between massive companies and SMEs, and unlock the enormous potential that R&D can have.

John Lavery, Secretary at the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851