I have a bit of R&D experiences in industry, but it is not inside the lab. I do work closely with those in the lab itself, so I will talk a bit about that. The time given is a great deal less than in academia, but the access to varied resources is much greater. I work for J&J Consumer. I have spent a great deal of time talking to someone creating a novel form of soap. The biggest difference is definitely the varied knowledge bases in the company. In a lab the majority of the people working in that lab will be focused on the same thing. The lab that I worked in at school was focused on traumatic brain injury so they had many experts in the field but not in others. In industry the people who work there all have highly varied experience. So when my friend got stuck trying to balance parts of his formula, he asked around and found someone who is an expert in the problem he was having. That meant that in less than one full work day he was in contact with a person who could help him solve his problem. One big difference at least in my experience is that because I work for a large company I have to deal with the bureaucracy that comes with it. I didn’t have to deal with this in the lab. If I needed anything I just went and got it. I didn’t need approval or support, I could just execute.

To those of you who have experience with both, what do you think the major differences are with regards to time?