Necessary conditions for successful company research

Industrial research can serve many functions. If applied continuously, these functions help to build research potentials. We identify five potentials: an identification potential, an external knowledge transfer potential, a creative or inventive potential, and an internal research result transfer potential. Assuming that either one of these potentials is present or is missing, we find 16 different situations of a research laboratory. We make plausible that in most of these situations the necessary conditions for research to contribute successfully to the competitiveness of the firm are not met. Considering one example, we discuss how weaknesses of a potential can be identified, and what could be done to build a missing potential