All about core R&D activities

Core R&D activity is activity that:

• seeks to resolve scientific or technological uncertainty
• follows a systematic approach
• seeks to create new knowledge, or new or improved processes, services or goods.

An activity must be performed in New Zealand to qualify as core R&D activity.

As a guide, core R&D activity generally:

• begins once you have identified a scientific or technological uncertainty and decided to take a planned approach to resolve it
• ends when you stop measuring and evaluating the extent to which the uncertainty has been resolved.

Core R&D activity can include things like:

• designing and documenting the systematic approach of testing
• conducting the tests, analysis or experiments
• evaluating the results and feeding them back to modify the original proposition.

There must be at least one core R&D activity per project, but some projects may have more than one core R&D activity.

There are some things that don’t qualify as core R&D activities.

Find out more about excluded activities.