How to organize an R&D team/department? There is not one answer, depends a lot on industry, culture, type of product, ..etc. An interesting article from McKinsey on some useful principles/guidelines.
- Clearly delineate responsibilities for systems and end-to-end work
- Keep functional interfaces across work sites to minimum
- Synchronize software and hardware development
- Strike balance between old and new technologies
- To be future-read, adopt new ways of working
More of this here: [The link]