[momotomo]

Disagree. This is not binary unless you are a small shop. Operational activities produce tangible products via shipping. R&D Departments produce concepts.

Concepts as a "product" are just a useful marketing opportunity on the back of your research. Everything else that went into the research, and all the learnings that come out of it, flow into your future products, even if its years down the track.

The two examples they provided don't hold water either. Nokia and Microsoft produce concepts: yes. They both have significant research departments, it's to be expected. It completely discounts their market share (historical or current) and the sheer volume of released products.

Any business that grows to a point will start doing concept work and research. It's the same as any creative or product process - sometimes you have to bang through a whole lot of useless concepts before you have worked through enough ideas to understand which parts of which end point work as a whole.

Concepts are basically like any other form of failure - they're the pile of learnings that help you get closer in the next iteration.