Research and Development

Research and development (R&D) are activities having the aim of gaining new knowledge, possibilities of new applications and developing new services and methods.

R&D is complete if the following criteria can be met

• there is a given problem that has to be solved – the solution will be a new method or service (the factor of creation)
• the activity contains an element being new in comparison with other existing products or services(the factor of novelty)
• the research work is based on an unknown result (the factor of uncertainty)

It is important to meet these criteria at least at company level. In social sciences, R&D activities are mostly related to new methodologies and modeling. Meanwhile software development does not always count as R&D activity. It is R&D when relating theories and new technological appliances are connected to the software (for example: development of a new program language).