Most first-time inventors think "R&D" means a chemist mixing ingredients in a beaker. Real product R&D is the work that separates a product that sells from a product that gets stuck in a warehouse: market viability analysis, formulation against your specific claims, ingredient sourcing within your cost target, stability prediction, regulatory compliance design, and patent-readiness.
Get R&D right and the rest of the value chain runs smoothly. Get it wrong — pick the wrong actives, miss a regulatory requirement, design a formula that won't survive a hot truck in July — and every downstream stage suffers.