咩叫research and development??

Research and development is organized efforts to increase scientific knowledge or product innovation & may involve:

1.Basic Research :advances knowledge about a subject without near-term expectations of commercial applications. (e.g. 科學家發現光纖傳導性高)

2.Applied Research :achieves commercial applications. (商人develope光纖作為傳data既工具)

3.Development : converts results of applied research into commercial applications.(PCCW個人6MB寬頻)

As every product has it own product-line cycle, it must decline in certain period. To maintain the market share, profit and reputation; a corporation must have a R&D department. It is used for keeping innovation. Further more, many scholars found that the product-line cycle for most product will become shorter and shorter. Cash cow and Star can no longer dominate the market for decades. R&D department will become one of the critical successful factor of most corporation.

2006-10-27 02:19:18 補充：
Besides, when a product is developed, R&D have to make differentiation. For example, LG developed 3G moblie phone, and then SonyErisson developed 3G+Walkman moblie phone which can successfully capture much more market share.