Primary research potentials as a necessary condition for research success

Having identified primary research potentials it is important to ask which of these are necessary conditions for securing company success, and in what combination they should appear. Discussion of necessary conditions for research success does not make much sense if a company only occasionally engages in research: it would then be unlikely that technology managers are cognizant of the need to develop a special research management approach. Supporting this assumption is an observation by Eggers (1997, p. 9). He was unable to discover relationships among variables that explain research functions, communication activities, research success, etc. for a sample including firms with relatively low and relatively high research expenditures. Once he concentrated on those firms having relatively high research expenditures, he was able to support a large number of plausible hypotheses. Although the high spenders had not all adopted identical behaviors, certain common traits could be established. This was not observed for the 40% low spenders in the sample.