Challenges for RD Managers on the Path to Commercialisation: A Comparative Study between Turkish and German Automotive Sectors

摘要

Emerging economies like Turkey have different conditions than leading OECD countries when it comes to R&D. There is a lack of traditionally strong industries with sustained global commercial success for decades, a scarcity of highly experienced R&D staff and high turnover rate among R&D engineers. However, for almost two decades, MNEs, joint ventures and ambitious national players have been building up R&D capacities in emerging markets. We conducted interviews and surveys with Turkish and German R&D managers in order to analyze the impacts of these different conditions on project management, R&D culture, HR, strategy and commercialization barriers. The hypothesis that R&D activities are not in line with commercialization processes in many Turkish companies is confirmed by many answers in the survey. The way managers perceive commercialization barriers in the survey produced some unforeseen results that can only be explained with further knowledge from interviews and market experience. Especially management culture seems to overlay and distort assumed differences between the countries.