What Drives Successful R&D? Orestis Georgiou Shares the Core Principles
What windsurfing, uncertainty, and cross-continental collaboration taught Orestis Georgiou about R&D. What does it really take to lead innovation in a world full of complexity, uncertainty, and shifting technologies?
In this candid conversation with Andros Zacharia, Orestis Georgiou, co-author of R&D Management and Technology Commercialization, shares the personal story behind the book — from a childhood curiosity about physics to leading R&D teams in startups, corporates, and global partnerships. Along the way, he touches on leadership transitions, team building, and what R&D managers can learn from nature (and windsurfing).
Here are some of the key takeaways for emerging R&D leaders — or anyone wondering how to make the leap from science to strategy.
1. The Windsurfing Mindset of R&D
Orestis opens the conversation with a powerful metaphor: windsurfing as a model for innovation management.
Windsurfing requires constant awareness of shifting forces — wind, waves, fatigue — while maintaining forward momentum. You can’t control the environment, but you can train yourself to read it, respond fast, and recover quickly.
“R&D management is a lot like windsurfing,” he explains. “You need strategy, adaptability, and a willingness to fall — and get back up.”
This mindset — part resilience, part instinct, part grit — is at the core of how Orestis approaches uncertainty in research leadership.
2. A winding trajectory
Orestis didn’t set out to be an R&D leader. His path wound through physics, a PhD in mathematics, a postdoc in Germany, and research positions in both startups and multinationals like Toshiba.
His early questions — “How is innovation actually done in different sectors and organisation?” — led him from technical expertise into management, where he discovered a new kind of challenge: balancing research depth with organizational alignment.
Later, through teaching MBA students and running real-world projects, he found the clarity (and urgency) to co-author a book with Mykola Maksymenko and Stephen Russo — a guide they wish they had 10 years earlier.
3. Leadership Begins When Someone Believes in You
One of the turning points in Orestis’s career came when his CTO tapped him to lead a research team.
“I didn’t know if I was ready. But when someone believes in you, you start to believe in yourself.”
That experience reshaped his view of leadership. He went from researcher to resource allocator, from team member to team builder. And with that shift came the realisation that R&D managers need more than technical mastery — they need communication, empathy, and systems thinking.
4. Real Failure Isn’t Experimental — It’s Organizational
Orestis is clear: most R&D experiments will fail. That’s expected. The real failure happens when knowledge doesn’t move — when promising results get stuck in a silo and never make it to engineering, marketing, or the product team.
“The true risk in R&D is irrelevance,” he says. “If your outputs never leave the lab, you’re not adding value — no matter how smart your science is.”
This principle drives much of the book’s structure — how to bridge research and commercialization, how to build cross-functional trust, and how to structure teams for impact.
5. The Bee Analogy (and Why Nature Still Has the Best Playbook)
Chapter 1 of the book opens with an unexpected metaphor: bees foraging for nectar. It’s not just poetic — it’s deeply strategic.
Bees alternate between exploration (searching for new resources) and exploitation (returning to rich patches). R&D teams must do the same — balance blue-sky research with focused product development.
Just as bees evolve communication protocols (like the “waggle dance”) to transfer knowledge, so must R&D teams learn to communicate across disciplines, locations, and roles.
6. Staying Relevant in an AI-Accelerated World
When the book began, AI was just entering mainstream awareness. By the time the draft was finished, large language models and automation were changing the fabric of innovation itself.
But instead of making predictions, the authors focused on principles: How should AI shift your hiring strategy? How do you manage intellectual property in an AI-assisted workflow? How can AI enhance — but not replace — human judgment in R&D?
For Orestis, it’s not about resisting AI. It’s about building the right frameworks to adapt.
7. Innovation Is More Than Just Product
Too many companies still equate innovation with product features. But the real value — especially in large organizations — often comes from business model innovation, process design, and customer experience.
“Sometimes the most impactful innovation isn’t the product itself,” Orestis explains. “It’s how you deliver it, how you charge for it, how you structure the org to support it.”
This is where the book’s practical frameworks help readers evaluate innovation across ten dimensions — and prioritize what really matters.
Final Thought: From Research to Relevance
Orestis didn’t write this book to add another theory to the shelf. He wrote it to help real professionals — in startups, corporates, and academia — build R&D organizations that matter.
Because at the end of the day, as he says:
“What drives me is trying to understand, to care, to create something useful — and to help others do the same.”
Whether you’re leading an innovation team or wondering how to take your next step, the message is clear: there’s no single path — but there is a mindset, a structure, and a set of tools that can help.
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R&D Management and Technology Commercialization
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