Industrial research is driven naturally by commercial interests. In contrast to purely academic research, "time to market", "low hanging fruits" and "turnkey solutions" are buzz-words that industrial researchers are faced with on a daily basis. Under these superimposed pressures, it is a major challenge to achieve a good balance of scientific accuracy, systematics, cost efficiency and time efficiency. A couple of tools help us to keep track of the hundreds of projects in different stages from the idea phase to the ready-to-launch phase. While it is clear that R&D specialists are predominantly active in the early stages of a project, in generating ideas and feasibility studies, it is also important that the inventors support a project through all phases right up to final commercialization.
