Research and development process

A process for conducting research and development (R&D) on one or more projects, the process used by organization having a head of R&D, the process comprising:

• (a) including the head of R&D as a member of the Board of Directors;
• (b) planning and selecting the one or more projects, each project comprising a technology, a product, or both, on which to conduct the research and development;
• (c) prioritizing the selected one or more projects;
• (d) establishing a schedule, a time table, or both for performing the R&D for each project;
• and
• (g) establishing a budget for each project and determining whether the budget for each project will be funded entirely using internal sources of capital or by using one or more external sources of capital;
• (h) establishing a competition between at least two identifiably distinct R&D teams to work on each project, wherein at least one of the teams is an external team and at least one of the teams is an internal team, each team including at least one team leader responsible for leading members of each team, wherein establishing the external time comprises allowing a plurality of external teams to bid to enter the competition, and choosing, based upon the bids submitted by the plurality of teams, the at least one team to participate in the competition;
• (i) identifying a project manager to oversee the competition for each project, each project manager reporting to the head of R&D;
• (j) providing an incentive for winning the competition;
• (k) each team working on the project and developing a proposed solution;
• (l) periodically evaluating the progress of each team to determine if any team can be declared a winner or can be eliminated from the competition, including considering a progress report prepared by an independent third party regarding each team's performance;
• (m) comparing the proposed solutions developed by the teams against solutions available through licensing and purchase opportunities;
• (n) a committee comprising the head of R&D and the project managers for a plurality of the projects designating a winning solution and a winning team for each project;
• (o) awarding the incentive to the winning team for each project;
• (p) procuring one or more forms of Intellectual property for at least the winning solution for each project, and optionally for one or more losing solutions for each project;
• (q) using a valuation process to determine a fair market value for a business based upon each winning solution and the intellectual property associated therewith;
• (r) for each project, determining whether to further develop the project internally, license rights related to the project to a third party, or sell the project in part or in whole to a third party.