R&D doesn’t (and shouldn't) emerge from a single source in your company. It is either pushed internally by champions driving deliberate innovation or investigation, or pulled through the course of delivering complex products or services to customers.
Push and Pull R&D - Balancing Both in Your BusinessIn engineering, a push project might involve a team exploring a radically improved optical vision system to meet future performance thresholds, clearly scoped and well resourced. But valid and potentially qualifying R&D can also surface during delivery. For example, when unanticipated failures occur during a custom tooling deployment, they may require iterative experimentation with materials, tolerances, or design logic.
In software, pushing might mean building a new platform capability from scratch, while pulling might involve overcoming scaling and latency challenges uncovered during the integration and interoperability of two legacy systems. In both cases, meaningful technological uncertainty is present.
Both types of R&D can give rise to valid and potentially qualifying R&D under tax or regulatory definitions. The key differentiator is the organisation's ability to detect, document, and support these activities in real time.
| Push R&D | Pull R&D |
| Push R&D is proactive and intentional. It is initiated by internal champions who identify a technological opportunity or unmet performance threshold and seek to address it through structured investigation. These initiatives are often scoped in advance, backed by dedicated resources, and explicitly recognised as R&D. | In contrast, Pull R&D is reactive and embedded within the execution of customer-facing or delivery-oriented projects. It may arise during the integration of new systems, the resolution of unforeseen failures, or the adaptation of core technologies to meet specific delivery constraints. This work often involves experimentation, technical iteration, and the resolution of uncertainty, but it is not always formally labelled as R&D. Because Pull R&D is driven by delivery timelines and operational demands, it may be under-resourced and difficult to isolate from routine engineering. |
Case Study: Dual R&D Pathways in an Industrial Automation Firm
Company Profile
A mid-sized engineering firm designs and manufactures custom automation solutions for high-throughput manufacturing environments. The company serves both multinational clients and domestic manufacturers, with a mix of standard products and bespoke systems.Push R&D Example: High-Speed Pick-and-Place System
The engineering team identified an opportunity to improve their existing robotic arm technology by increasing precision at higher speeds. A dedicated internal project was launched to explore new control algorithms, lighter materials, and low-latency feedback systems. The project was champion-led, formally scoped, and resourced over six months. Key technical challenges included minimising vibration at peak acceleration and optimising sensor fusion algorithms. The outcome led to a new product module and a patent application. This was a clear case of structured, proactive R&D with well-documented advancement and uncertainty.Pull R&D Example: Custom Line Integration for a Client
During the delivery of a bespoke assembly line for a pharmaceutical client, the integration team encountered repeated failures in component alignment due to the client’s unusual packaging material. The team initiated a series of rapid tests and modifications, experimenting with guided rail tolerances, temperature-controlled material handling, and adaptive machine vision calibration. These changes were not part of the original project scope but required iterative technical investigation under time pressure. Although not initially recognised as R&D, this work met the criteria for technological uncertainty and advancement. It was later documented and included in the company’s R&D tax submission after a retrospective technical review.
Strategic Impact on your Business
Both Push and Pull R&D offer distinct strategic advantages and limitations. Push initiatives allow organisations to set direction, build proprietary capabilities, and pursue long-horizon innovation, but they require upfront investment and may lack immediate commercial validation. Pull R&D, by contrast, is grounded in real-world constraints and customer needs. It tends to be leaner, faster, and more directly tied to revenue, but is harder to structure, scale, or recognise as R&D unless systems are in place to capture it.
A resilient innovation strategy does not favour one mode over the other, it enables both to function in parallel, with mechanisms to surface, support, and align them with the organisation’s goals.
Extract from Executive R&D and Innovation Training Programme, ReaDI-WatchMeasuring, Managing and Tracking R&D
In order to answer the question: how much are we spending on "qualifying R&D" for R&D tax credits, one must develop a way to measure (and manage!) the R&D that arises in both push and pull-style R&D projects. ReaDI-Watch simplifies this process.
Streamlining Project Tracking on ReaDI-WatchIn ReaDI-Watch platform, the approach to R&D project tracking can flex to suit the needs of the business.
| ReaDI-Watch Platform Tracking | How its Captured - Push R&D | How its Captured - Pull R&D |
| Time-Logging | Weekly R&D Project Time-Logs on ReaDI-Watch | Extracted from ERP system job tracking (engineering) or Jira (software) epic tracking |
| Expense Tracking | Budgets set, R&D expenses tagged and tracked vs budget, invoices uploaded to ReaDI-Watch | Expenses extracted from ERP job tracking |
| Investigative Results | Uploaded to ReaDI-Watch directly | Extracted from Customer Job shared drive folders and/or Jira Epics |
| ReaDI-Watch Facilitated R&D Meetings | Periodic meetings, either sequenced regularly throughout project, or aligned to key project milestones. | Monthly R&D meetings where multiple ongoing jobs are discussed. |
See our article on "Facilitated R&D Meetings" - this is where we gather the development journey, insights, trials, experiments, successes, failures and more - which forms a rich part of our R&D project data-set.