Yasuo Sasaki

In recent years, technology firms have been facing a highly competitive environment on a global scale. The firms are accelerating to establish R&D sites abroad in order to access global knowledge resources. In this context, global R&D projects have become more complex and R&D bridge managers (BMs), who facilitate global research collaboration, play a pivotal role here. This study aims to investigate the difficulties that BMs are facing and to explore the roles of BMs in global R&D projects. We interviewed nine BMs who have facilitated global R&D projects and propose a model depicting four common and critical difficulties present in facilitating research collaboration between teams in the home country and foreign R&D teams. The unique contribution of this paper focuses on the individual managerial level, while most previous studies on global R&D mainly focused on an organizational level.

© 2019 PICMET. Although globalization provides opportunities for companies to expand their businesses, it brings more challenges to global project management. Collaboration in global research and development (RD) projects requires competent individuals helping to improve project success. There are liaisons who we call RD bridge managers (BMs). They facilitate research collaboration in global RD projects between teams in the home country and the firm's foreign RD teams. Success in BM role requires a set of competencies that related to this job. Competency development frameworks have proofed themselves to be an effective tool for human resource management. The frameworks identify skills, behaviors, and knowledge that are necessary to ensure job performance. The frameworks have three components: competency list, competency assessment, and competency development method. This study aims to propose a competency list for BMs. This competency list is one component of BM competency development framework (BMCDF). The competency list is constructed based on literature survey. It may help BMs to overcome difficulties and challenges in their job. The BMCDF could benefit both BMs to plan for their competency development and organizations to clarify expected job performance. This competency list will be used in the future as part of BMCDF for facilitating global RD projects.