R&D in a mid-size software development company is about discovering and validating new product opportunities, not fundamental research. Without dedicated labs or large budgets, teams identify gaps from client work, prototype solutions to real user needs, and test ideas alongside commercial projects. unicrew’s approach shows that company size matters far less than domain expertise and structured curiosity.
Is the game worth the candle?
In unicrew’s Lviv office, a group of engineers was deep in debate about how to make an application distinguish essential video elements from non-essential ones. They were in the research phase of the “white-spaces” video remover: an app that eliminates whitespace from videos. It wasn’t a commercial project. Our R&D team had identified a real user need and, after initial research, decided to turn the idea into a working prototype.
A second group was working with text recognition technology known as OpSIR to develop an image text parser: a tool that makes it easier to copy text from images in videos, including lines of code and instructional content.
R&D is commonly imagined as something reserved for well-equipped labs and large research teams. For mid-size software companies, it looks different: it’s the disciplined activity of discovering and validating new product opportunities in domains your team already understands deeply. According to Bain & Company, global spending on engineering and R&D is growing at a 10% CAGR between 2022 and 2026, with digital engineering investment growing at nearly double that rate. Software and ICT companies typically invest 14-20% of revenue in R&D. Mid-size firms that ignore it aren’t just missing new product opportunities: they’re falling behind on the institutional knowledge that drives future delivery capability.
“We are a fast-growing company, and the pace of growth challenges every business. Our teammates are very curious, so we decided to harness their curiosity by creating new opportunities for our talents. Eventually, our company motto is ‘beyond the framework.'”
Andriy Burda, Senior Engineering Manager at unicrew
We sat down with Andriy to discuss unicrew’s first R&D projects, the reasons mid-size companies invest in research and development, and how the team runs R&D without a dedicated lab or scientific staff.
What are the first R&D projects your team works on?
Our first R&D projects are web applications addressing challenges in managing video. We inherited the curiosity about video-related problems from our internal startup, Snaplore (a knowledge management platform that combines text and video recording), which already runs as a standalone service. Research confirmed demand for easy-to-use tools that improve the experience of video and image processing, particularly for e-learning use cases. We built two working prototypes.
“White-spaces” video remover
Most education and training now happens online, typically as video lectures. Not all instructors record concisely: whitespace interruptions (pauses while something loads, or when the presenter falls silent) add significant length without adding value. Our R&D team built an app that detects and removes these sections without altering the video’s structure or content. After processing, videos are consistently shorter: the reduction averages 30% on the videos we tested.
Image text parser
Apple devices allow users to highlight and copy text from images on iPhone and iPad. We built the same functionality for the web. The image text parser analyzes a web page containing photos and makes any text in those images selectable and copyable: useful for extracting code snippets, data tables, or instructional text from video frames. It is built on OpSIR text recognition technology and works offline or on slow connections after the initial page analysis.
What are the reasons mid-size software companies get involved in R&D?
A company’s size is less important than its potential. R&D in software typically focuses on specific initiatives and the development of new products. When a team encounters a problem that has no ready solution, that gap becomes the motivation: to understand the need clearly enough to build something that genuinely addresses it.
Agility is part of the answer too. The IT sector transforms rapidly: technologies move through hype cycles, reach adoption, and become table stakes within a few years. R&D gives a mid-size company a way to engage with emerging technologies before they become requirements in client projects. The goal isn’t to chase every trend: it’s to stay close enough to the frontier that when a client asks about a capability, we’ve already evaluated it in practice. We aim to surf the innovation wave rather than react to it after the fact.
What’s the difference between R&D and client project work?
On client projects, we work within a concrete framework. We align with the client’s business practices, adhere to defined time and budget constraints, and deliver against agreed specifications. The primary goal is a reliable outcome. Some client projects include genuine R&D components, and those create valuable space for our team to bring an innovative mindset to commercial work.
R&D initiatives operate differently. They’re not bound by a rigid delivery structure. There’s room to evaluate pre-existing solutions, explore partial implementations, and change direction when a better approach surfaces. Even when an R&D initiative produces no immediate commercial result, it enriches the team’s experience and validates approaches that can feed back into client projects or shape the next research cycle.
What are the biggest R&D obstacles, and how do you address them?
The first is time allocation. It’s not straightforward to pull an engineer off a client engagement and redirect them to an R&D initiative. The challenge is matching available experts to well-defined concepts at the right moment in both the project cycle and the research lifecycle.
The second is idea originality. Many apparent gaps have already been addressed somewhere, particularly in US, Chinese, and Indian markets where capital and developer density are highest. Every proposed initiative needs a market evaluation: is a comparable product already available, and if so, what would distinguish the new one enough to matter?
The third is objectivity. Teams develop attachment to ideas early, which makes impartial assessment harder. The discipline of evaluating a concept from a genuine market perspective, independent of the enthusiasm that generated it, is essential. Ideas that don’t survive this evaluation are better discarded early than pursued to a dead end at significant cost.
If you have no labs or scientists, how do you conduct R&D?
We don’t work on new materials or particle physics. What we do have is deep experience delivering client projects across many domains, which surfaces real gaps and unmet needs. When we identify one, the natural question is: can we validate this and build a solution worth pursuing?
The process starts with team-level concept analysis, weighing advantages and weaknesses while working to strip out the emotional component. Many ideas don’t survive this stage, which is the point. Concepts that pass get broken down into measurable objectives, then organized into manageable tasks in our project management system. It’s a structured process that looks more like disciplined product development than laboratory science. R&D team members may or may not have academic credentials: what matters is the ability to identify genuine potential in a problem and pursue it rigorously.
Even when R&D produces no tangible results initially, it enriches our experience and serves as validation of innovative approaches. We can use outcomes for client projects and as the starting point for new R&D initiatives.
Andriy Burda, Senior Engineering Manager at unicrew
What is your personal motivation for doing R&D?
It’s inspiration. I’ve had the drive to learn something new since I was young. When I stop acquiring new knowledge, I feel it. The accomplishments of others show that humanity is in constant development, and we have no real choice but to move forward at the pace of technological change. My long-term ambition is to build unicrew’s engineering laboratory: a space where the team can work on ideas and creative technical solutions outside the constraints of commercial project work.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is R&D in software development?
R&D in software development is the process of exploring new technologies, building prototypes, and validating product ideas before committing to full commercial development. Unlike client project work, which is bound by defined requirements and timelines, R&D is exploratory: it accepts uncertainty as a condition and treats inconclusive results as useful data rather than failures.
Can mid-size software companies run effective R&D without a dedicated lab?
Yes. Effective software R&D doesn’t require a dedicated lab or scientific staff. It requires domain expertise, a structured process for evaluating ideas, and the discipline to separate promising concepts from wishful thinking. Mid-size software companies with deep client experience are often well-positioned for R&D precisely because they’ve encountered real-world problems across multiple industries and have the engineering skills to prototype solutions quickly.
How does R&D differ from regular software development?
Regular software development delivers a defined outcome within known constraints of scope, timeline, and budget. R&D explores whether a particular outcome is achievable or commercially viable, with no guarantee of a deliverable result. The process is more iterative, the failure rate is higher, and value is often measured in knowledge and validated learning rather than features shipped.
What are the biggest challenges of running R&D at a software company?
The three most consistent challenges are: allocating experienced engineer time away from revenue-generating work, identifying genuinely novel ideas in markets that are already well-served, and maintaining objectivity when evaluating whether an idea has real commercial potential. The last is hardest: teams naturally develop attachment to concepts they generated, making impartial market-based assessment difficult without a structured review process.
Sources: Bain & Company: Global ER&D Investment Forecast | NSF/NCSES: US Business R&D Performance 2023 | nCube: The Role of R&D in Software Development