I was in R&D but I quit a while ago. Whenever R&D produced something, the people in operations would ask if it could do this or that. The guys in operations thought they were clever by poking (insignificant) holes in what R&D have produced. The guys in operations should have been selling what R&D produced but they were too lazy. It was much easier to sit around and point fingers at R&D than it was to actually interface with customers and make a sale. Now you have virtually no R&D. The smart ones have moved to companies that really appreciate them.
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Sadly Weatherford (BDD) never understood the value of organic R&D. He believed in R&D through acquisition. The problem with this is twofold. First Weatherford almost always paid a premium price to acquire new technologies. Second it is static. The technology acquired today was not developed forward in a well thought out manner. Weatherford is always playing catch up because of this.
There are some exceptions to this such as TRS and FRE where Weatherford actually did develop some in-house technologies. But those are fairly low tech / low cost developments. I know some one is going to jump up and point to Heat Wave or Compact WL but those systems are barely evolved past where they were when Weatherford acquired them. Precision had both of those systems when Weatherford bought them and all Weatherford did is modify them over the years since.
This is why we cannot get anything done!!!
Hey in R&D, it doesn't matter that you come up with nothing in 15 yrs. what matters most is you're thinking about something that might be a wonder product even if it never gets off the ground.
It seems a shame that r & d didn't coordinate with ops to see what the market wanted. That may have been an awesome combination. Nice to whine they didn't sell the almost functional stuff we built.
Advantage R&D was the backbone of LWD development. When Weatherford purchased them that was the start of the end. Corporate and operations never knew how to sell anything. They were experts on pointing fingers and blamed anyone else.
Only R&D was bought when acquiring other companies. Nothing organic.
Look at their self driven ICV development. Still nothing after 15+ years