In 2025, manufacturing R&D leaders were dealing with crisis after crisis: the accelerating adoption of AI, geopolitical instability, supply chain disruption, tariffs, regulatory changes, workforce shortages and a host of other industry-specific issues.  

In 2026, they’re still in crisis mode, but as we’ve seen time and again, they are evolving to meet the challenge. It is becoming increasingly clear that the relative predictability of the pre-pandemic era is a thing of the past and companies will need to rethink their existing processes and structures to succeed in our new era.

If you asked these leaders the top skill they should be developing in their teams, the assumption is that their answer would be how to work with AI. It’s more nuanced than that.

At the Innovation Research Interchange (a division of the National Association of Manufacturers) spring gathering of manufacturing R&D leaders in both 2025 and 2026, attendees were asked what questions they would need to answer to be better prepared for the future.

From one year to the next, we saw a shift from reactivity—responding to crisis after crisis—to proactivity: building the capabilities to weather whatever crisis is on the horizon.

Here are some examples of that shift around AI specifically:

A Vision of the Manufacturing R&D Organization of the Future

Planning to be proactive is all well and good, but you need to figure out what you're being proactive toward. What is a good example of a successful R&D organization in the not-so- distant future, one that keeps innovating despite disruption?

To answer that question, IRI gathered a working group of senior leaders to explore what sort of organization will be needed to support innovation in an uncertain medium-term future (early 2030s). From there, the group then drilled down into the skills and capabilities each R&D team would need to in order to bring that organization to life.

The team identified the future R&D function of a global organization as AI-enabled, globally distributed, platform-driven and ecosystem-integrated.  The organization will operate as a dynamic network rather than fixed structure while combining internal expertise with external partnerships to accelerate learning and value creation. Speed, adaptability and the ability to orchestrate across boundaries will define competitive advantage. 

Quilting Our Way to the Future

Alexa Dembek, former chief technology and sustainability officer at Dupont, has likened teams to quilts. Not every individual component is supposed to be the same. When individuals come together with the different things that they bring to the table, they create something both beautiful and functional.

To determine what components are needed to make this vision of a future R&D organization function in reality, the working group mapped the attributes above to the skills and capabilities needed to actually achieve them.

In addition to deep technical knowledge, the top five essential skills and capabilities R&D teams will need are:

In the meantime, leaders should start laying the groundwork with their teams:

1. Go back to basics. Don’t underestimate the importance of team-building activities. Get people talking to one another and connecting.

2. Reinforce the connection. Help build business acumen by explaining and reiterating how and why each project relates back to the organization’s strategic goals.  

3. Encourage working cross-functionally. Deliberately put different teams together to work on a shared challenge and be explicit that you are doing so to get them working better together. Don’t let the teamwork get lost in the drive to solve the challenge.

Both will contribute to the R&D organization’s quilt, but in very different ways. The ability to build those relationships, understand who needs to be working together, and get everyone rowing in the same direction are uniquely human skills. Companies that are able to leverage these skills while using AI to speed up their processes will be the ones to thrive in the next era.

To learn more, check out IRI’s Future R&D Capabilities Phase I Study: Top Skills Needed for Successful R&D Teams