The coconut industry consists of a very wide range of situations and operations which have all their own competitiveness. Improving the competitiveness of the coconut industry can be done by increasing yields, by decreasing costs, by diversifying to higher value products or, more generally, by a combination of these factors. Research strives to offer solutions in these three directions but with variable emphasis and results. Two main identified constraints are underfunding of research and slow transfer of new technologies to the production sector. Among the existing solutions offered by research, a few examples are high yielding hybrids, fertilizer management systems, disease control and fry-dry process. Other work is in progress on biotechnologies and their applications to agronomy and breeding, cropping systems, sustainability and new processing technologies. Coconut research is still lagging behind in comparison to other oil crops, but making the industry competitive can only be achieved through the development of research. Networking research around centers of excellence is the present trend for improving efficiency.