Research and Development (R&D) is underestimated in services. This article combines deductive and inductive approaches in order to formulate a new definition of R&D. However, the proposed revision does not fundamentally alter the structure of the current definition. The OECD definition is only marginally amended by making explicit certain implicit or insufficiently highlighted characteristics, in particular the importance of the social sciences and humanities and of design and development or organisational engineering, the composite nature of projects, etc. Our objective, indeed, is to attain a certain 'psychological' threshold that would mark our emancipation from the inertia of the still dominant industrialist and technologist approaches. As William Baumol (2002) rightly points out in a provocatively titled paper ("Services as leaders and the leader of services"), not only is research and development a service activity but it also, and most importantly, occupies a privileged position among such activities. However, despite this commonality, and despite R&D"s strategic importance,
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