R&D Resources in Multibusiness Firms

Almost half a century of diversification research supports the suggestion thatrelated resources lead to a superior performance of multibusiness firms.Nonetheless no direct measurement concept on a complete resource base ofa single business function exists up to now. This book is focusing on this gapand the understanding of R&D. Besides the core question of relatedness thereare two main hypotheses developed: Is relatedness similar to the potentialsynergies of a resource which is tested to be significantly true while knowledgebased resources are tested not to be more important for the success ofR&D than others. The results suggest that three resources are most importantin terms of relatedness. These are analysed and categorised on a more detailedsub-level to identify the related resources of R&D units but also to highlightthe degree of relatedness within these resources. The measure is able tooffer one overall relatedness value that shows to what degree R&D departmentswithin a multibusiness firm are related. Hence this book offers interestingimplications for oncoming studies on measuring relatedness as itdoes for practitioners who want to measure the relatedness of R&D.