Global integration of marketing and R&D: IBM'S Haifa Research Laboratory and its “WebCutter” technology

Abstract

How can companies best integrate their marketing function with research and development? As product life-cycles and development cycles become ever shorter, and as increasing proportions of R&D are outsourced, linking the marketplace with the laboratory becomes both crucially important and increasingly difficult, especially for trans-national companies whose R&D sites are distant from markets and marketing operations. This case study examines the integration of marketing and R&D in the context of the free IBM Internet software, “Mapuccino”TM (available at IBM's corporate Website and known internally as “WebCutter”), developed at IBM's Haifa Research Laboratory in Israel.

Citation

Horwitch, M., Grupp, H., Maital, S., Dopelt, G. and Sobel, G. (2001), "Global integration of marketing and R&D: IBM'S Haifa Research Laboratory and its “WebCutter” technology", Woodside, A.G. (Ed.) Getting Better at Sensemaking (Advances in Business Marketing and Purchasing, Vol. 9), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 203-214. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1069-0964(00)09007-4