Question #4

Was ‘technical innovation’ achieved?

Functional innovation is about what a new solution does while technical innovation is about how it works.

Functional innovation on its own is not considered R&D, but technical innovation is.

For example, with software, it's not enough for the solution to just have new features/functionality.

The underlying technology must be innovative (i.e. not standard or routine) for the work to potentially qualify as R&D.