I am currently trying to develop a good, crisp way of talking about the responsibility of a leader in R&D organizations. Here is what I am coming up with so far...

First and foremost, a leader is responsible for the performance of his team. All other things trickle from that. Employee moral, drive, participation, reach, significance, conversion rate, all those elements of the work of a leader are based on performance.

There are two ways of looking at the performance of any team: Effectiveness and Efficiency:

Effectiveness is the ability to generate in-demand results.
This is the new-value-creation part of our job. It is Externally Focused.

Efficiency is the ability to lower the frictions inside the team.
This is the cost-reduction part of our job. It is Internally Focused.

For R&D teams, this has special meaning for the measures of success:

Metrics for Effectiveness of R&D

• Conversion Rate: how many ideas are launched into markets
• Success Rate: how many market launches from R&D ideas make their numbers?
• Pipeline Density: how many concepts per employee make it through the front end?
• Pricing Power: how much pricing differential do new products demand in the market?
• Expansion: how many ideas create new markets ("blue oceans")?

Metrics for Efficiency of R&D

• Pipeline Length: how long does it take to mature an idea to a production launch?
• Handshakes: how many times does the idea change hands before it becomes a product?
• Architectural Flexibility: how many ideas require a total rewrite of existing architectures?
• Cost of Concept: how much does it cost per unit sold to mature an idea to a concept?
• Network: how densely networked is the R&D department with the rest of the company and the world?