Research Manager vs Business Manager: How to Manage R&D by Alexey Gusakov (Yandex) - Q&A (Category Management)

Questions to the Speaker in this report It was also interesting.

The answer is that there is a certain quota on the value stream of RnD, which is set from the total number of engineers. The indicator itself varies over time, its specific value is periodically revised, and Alexey acts as a person who justifies why this quota should grow:)

• How does RnD stream sell its technologies to the business part of Yandex? - The answer is that business technologies often do not need to be flung, as teams themselves are ready to shoot them to themselves and integrate them into products. But of course, RnD streaming can help spread the word.

• How to manage the motivation of employees who are engaged in RnD, when they are not successful? - In RnD, most experiments end in failure, so you need to be prepared for this. If we talk about formalities, then good work is not criticized, even if the RnD project did not shoot.

How are decisions made and activities prioritized? - Final decisions are made by Alexey + several leads (The answer to the question “Why is that?” was “Because we are not pro-democracy.”). To be honest, I also believe that strategic decisions cannot be made through consensus in a large group.

How to justify RnD in the company and how to sell them? If there are technologies in the world that can be useful for a company but it doesn’t invest in them, then this could be an argument for the need for R&D.

How technology and customer and product needs come together – Yandex has product people who research user needs and offer new technologies to meet them. However, it is not always possible to fulfill all the needs of users using current technologies and then it is the turn of RnD.

#Management #Architecture #Culture #RnD