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Hot Intersections (cont'd)

Such considerations can be color-coded, e.g., red for strategic importance, orange for likely disturbances, yellow for expected challenges, green for special opportunities, etc. Color rings around each of the interface nodes can be “sized” -- small or large -- to show relative executive emphasis and to telegraph planned levels of executive surveillance and future review.

Recently, a client’s Regional Chief Scientific Officer pointed up the importance of the interface between a particular Research Program and the Economic Function/Discipline in his organization. Color that interface red and make it large! By way of programmatic and budgetary justification, the first-blush cost-benefit analysis of this Research Program doesn’t present all that well because of the relatively small annual dollar volume of the industry to which it relates. However, when the value of the Research Program is considered by way of how it extends to an adjacent industry and also to adjacent Research Programs, a powerful and persuasive cost-benefit analysis will likely emerge – a striking analysis that can shake and shift the paradigm, telling a different story altogether.

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