Seeking examples of corporate departments that have been turned into profit centers. Maybe an in-house advertising, market research, PR or R&D function that was recast as a profit center--either selling internally or externally. (I am not interested in IT examples please). Seeking case studies that document such examples--whether successful or not in attaining profitability.
All of these *had better be* profit centers--otherwise, why are you running them?
Advertising MUST bring in an ROI. Kill the campaign if not.
Market research should be bringing you very valuable information about what your market wants, and why they'll buy. If not, the department's not doing its job.
Same with R&D. We're not doing applied research here--investigation for the sake of science. We're doing R&D *in a direction*! The direction that makes the product or service better for our customers...in accordance with what they told us they wanted via our market research.
Organizations need to be sales-driven. If they're engineering-driven, or accounting-driven, they'll die.
