An article was brought to my attention by one of my colleagues that I think makes plenty of sense. The Globe And Mail recently wrote an article called Information-rich and attention poor, on how we as a society have an abundance of information but much less of an attention span. The thought is when there is an abundance of one thing there tends to be a shortage of something else. In this age of digital technology we receive everything so quickly and it is hard to process it and to discern the factual information from the disinformation. So the mind becomes overloaded and starts to not pay attention to what maybe important. If anyone has school age kids try talking to them when the TV or iPods are on.
Throughout the day in the workplace we are bombarded with information from every angle, it is often more difficult to take on new responsibilities because you just don’t have the time. Now more than ever there is reason to utilize consulting experts in such mundane tasks as gathering information, report preparation and implementing process improvements. In claiming Research And Development Tax Credits like SR&ED it make sense to employ a consultant’s services, due to the often 6 or 7 figure returns that outweigh the consultant costs. The difficulty for companies who want to claim on past innovation efforts, is finding time to dig up what was often done 2 years in the past. Often the information is available but the task becomes insurmountable for companies who do not know where to look. Often companies can’t see the forest for the trees or have no time and need a second pair of eyes to realize the benefits of claiming SRED.