What Is an RD&I Update?

Teams doing scientific or technological work are usually good at building, testing, and problem-solving — but much less comfortable capturing what happens as it happens. Documentation tends to come later, often as slide decks or compliance-driven reports, and rarely reflects the uncertainty, false starts, or failures that shaped the work.

An RD&I Update changes that.

An RD&I Update is a short, time-bounded record of scientific or technological work, written close to when the work takes place. It captures what was worked on, what scientific or technological uncertainty was being addressed, what was tried, what was observed or learned, what remains unclear, and what decisions (if any) were made.

It is not about polish. It is about capturing reality while it is still fresh.

Why teams use RD&I Updates

When updates are written late, teams rely on memory and hindsight. Learning gets lost, uncertainty disappears, and documentation becomes harder and more stressful than it needs to be.

RD&I Updates help teams:

• Reduce the effort of “writing it all up later”

• Make uncertainty and failed approaches visible and acceptable

• Preserve learning that would otherwise be forgotten

• Create a reliable, evidence-anchored record of how work actually evolved

Instead of performing for a report, teams document thinking in motion.

Two ways to create RD&I Updates

RD&I Updates are designed to fit how teams actually work.

Self-written updates
 Some teams write updates themselves, close to the work. The structure acts as a lightweight guide, helping engineers and scientists capture what they did and learned without worrying about reporting formats or downstream use.

Interview-led updates by ReaDI-Watch
 Other teams prefer to stay focused on the technical work. In this case, ReaDI-Watch conducts short, structured interviews and writes the RD&I Updates on the team’s behalf, capturing real activity, uncertainty, and learning accurately and consistently.

Both approaches produce the same outcome: clear, reusable RD&I Updates grounded in real work and evidence.

Configured for your organisation (with ReaDI-Watch)

RD&I Updates start from a standard master structure, then ReaDI-Watch works with each organisation to configure what “good” looks like for their context — for example:

• Adding company-specific fields or terminology

• Linking updates to project structures (e.g. work packages or programmes)

• Setting the right level of detail for different teams or project stages

• Aligning outputs to internal governance and reporting needs
  
  

The core logic stays the same, while the capture and structure adapt to how your teams operate.

How RD&I Updates are used in ReaDI-Watch

Within ReaDI-Watch, RD&I Updates become the core building blocks of R&D understanding. Over time, they can be queried to see how work evolved, synthesised into reports or reviews without re-writing, and used to trace how scientific or technological uncertainty was addressed — without relying on retrospective reconstruction.