Quick answer: Before running an experiment, the team should establish whether the technical outcome is genuinely unresolved rather than merely unfamiliar internally. A further experimental question may arise where a competent professional still could not know or determine the outcome in advance from current knowledge, information or experience. The purpose of the prior-knowledge search is not to prove that nobody has ever worked on the problem, but to define what is already known and precisely what still requires experimentation.
The unknown starts with what is already known
A technical problem can feel new to the company without being new to the field.
A manufacturer may never have processed a particular material.
A software team may never have integrated two systems in that way.
An engineering business may be working under a combination of operating conditions it has not encountered before.
None of those facts, by themselves, establish a technical uncertainty.
For the R&D Tax Incentive, current Australian Government guidance says the relevant question is whether a competent professional could know or determine the outcome in advance using knowledge, information or experience that is publicly available or reasonably accessible anywhere in the world when the activity begins. The guidance specifically identifies scientific, technical and professional literature, internet searches, patent searches and expert advice as possible ways to investigate whether the required knowledge already exists.
The legislation places the same concept at the centre of the core R&D definition: the outcome must not be knowable or determinable in advance on the basis of current knowledge, information or experience, but must instead be determined through a systematic progression of work based on principles of established science. The activity must also be conducted for the purpose of generating new knowledge.
That makes the knowledge search part of research design, not simply background reading.
If an established method already answers the question, the next step may be implementation.
If published work explains the mechanism but does not cover the company's operating conditions, the uncertainty may become narrower.
If several credible sources disagree, rely on assumptions that do not hold in the proposed application, or leave a technically important variable unresolved, an experiment may still be required.
The search should therefore change the question.
If it does not, it may not have gone far enough.
Build a knowledge boundary, not a literature pile
A common mistake is to treat prior research as a collection exercise.
A folder fills with papers.
Patent documents are downloaded.
Engineers save supplier specifications.
Search results accumulate.
Yet the team still cannot explain why the proposed experiment is necessary.
A useful prior-knowledge review should instead create a boundary between three things:
What is established.
This includes known mechanisms, validated methods, recognised operating ranges, published performance and technical approaches a competent professional could reasonably apply.
What is known only under different conditions.
A method may work on a reference material but not have been demonstrated on the company's variable feedstock.
An algorithm may perform on a published dataset without evidence that the same behaviour transfers to the company's data.
A process may be established at one geometry, temperature range or production scale but not another.
What remains unresolved.
This is the part that should become the experimental question.
The result might be much narrower than the original project idea.
A team may begin with:
“Can we develop a new coating for this component?”
After reviewing the available knowledge, the research question may become:
“Can the established coating mechanism retain adhesion when the substrate undergoes the thermal cycling required in our operating environment?”
That is a better research question because the search has removed what is already known.
Current government guidance also expects the hypothesis to have a scientific basis and says records should show how background research was used to develop it.
The purpose of the search is therefore not to make the project appear novel.
It is to make the uncertainty precise enough to test.
Let the search decide whether to experiment, narrow or stop
A prior-knowledge review should be capable of changing the project.
That is important.
If the only acceptable outcome of the search is “we still need to run the experiment”, the review has become confirmation rather than investigation.
In practice, the search can lead to several legitimate decisions.
The first is implementation.
The team discovers an established method that already covers the relevant operating conditions. The technical question is no longer genuinely unresolved, even if implementing the method will still require substantial engineering work.
The second is a narrower experiment.
The literature resolves most of the original problem but leaves one interaction, boundary condition or failure mechanism unanswered. The experiment can then focus on that remaining gap rather than retesting known behaviour.
The third is a different hypothesis.
Prior work may show that the team's original explanation is unlikely, while suggesting another mechanism that better fits the available evidence.
The fourth is stop.
Sometimes the search shows that the desired outcome has already been investigated sufficiently to make further experimentation difficult to justify technically.
That can be a valuable project decision before the first physical test is run.
Australian Government guidance on supporting R&D activities recognises that a literature review used to refine a hypothesis before experimentation can, depending on the circumstances, be directly related to a planned core R&D activity. It still needs to satisfy the applicable supporting R&D requirements, including being directly related to an identified core R&D activity. The same guidance contrasts this with literature or internet searching undertaken to identify a market niche, which would ordinarily lack that direct relationship to the experimental activity.
That distinction is useful beyond R&DTI.
Technical research asks what knowledge is missing.
Commercial research asks whether there is a market opportunity.
Both may matter to the business, but they answer different questions.
Record why the experiment was still necessary
The strongest prior-knowledge record does not need to resemble an academic systematic review.
It does need to make the reasoning reconstructable.
A useful record may identify:
• the technical outcome being investigated;
• the most relevant scientific, technical or professional sources reviewed;
• key search terms, databases or patent searches used;
• relevant supplier or industry knowledge considered;
• expert advice obtained;
• the closest known methods or comparable systems;
• the conditions under which those methods are known to work;
• the limitation that prevents them from determining the proposed outcome; and
• the hypothesis that follows from that remaining gap.
The value lies in the connection between those elements.
Government record-keeping guidance specifically identifies background research showing gaps in current knowledge, and expert reports indicating that current knowledge cannot determine the outcome, as examples of records that may support the proposition that experimentation was required. It also states that records should be created at the time the activity is conducted, rather than reconstructed retrospectively.
That means the prior-knowledge record should exist before or as the hypothesis is being formed.
Writing it after the experiment has succeeded creates a different problem: hindsight makes an uncertain pathway look more obvious than it actually was.
A useful knowledge search leaves the project with a defensible technical statement:
Here is what was already known. Here is why it did not determine this outcome. Here is the specific question the experiment was designed to answer.
Once that statement is clear, experimental design becomes easier.
If it cannot yet be written, another experiment may not be the next step.
Conclusion
A technically difficult problem does not become an experimental research question simply because the answer is unfamiliar to the business.
A useful prior-knowledge review establishes what a competent professional could already know from accessible knowledge, identifies where that knowledge stops, and turns the remaining gap into a testable technical question.
When that boundary is clear, the business can decide whether the next step is implementation, a narrower experiment, a different hypothesis or no further experimentation at all.
Sources & Further Reading
Australian Government — Conducting core R&D activities for the R&D Tax Incentive
Australian Government — Conducting supporting R&D activities for the R&D Tax Incentive
Australian Government — Record keeping for the R&D Tax Incentive
Federal Register of Legislation — Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, Division 355
Talk to Ignition Research if your team has a technically difficult problem but has not yet established whether the answer already exists in accessible knowledge or whether a defined experiment is still required. As a Registered Research Service Provider, Ignition Research assists businesses with research question definition, experimental design, technical investigations and contemporaneous supporting records within its registered research fields.
RSP registration confirms that the provider has met the relevant registration requirements for its registered research fields. It does not constitute government endorsement of a project or guarantee R&DTI eligibility.
We do not determine R&DTI eligibility or provide tax advice. The R&D Tax Incentive is a self-assessment program, and companies remain responsible for assessing their activities, expenditure and circumstances and obtaining appropriate tax advice.
R&DTI note: A literature review or prior-knowledge search does not, by itself, establish R&DTI eligibility. Its relevance depends on the activity being undertaken, how it relates to the experimental work and whether the applicable core or supporting R&D requirements are satisfied.
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