The Economist wisely points out that:
"Merely counting pennies is no way to measure national prowess. Research spending is an input, not an output."
However, they do not propose an alternative metric.
It is also interesting to hear that:
"One reason why spending in Asia has risen is that American firms nearly doubled their R&D investments there in the decade to 2008, to $7.5 billion. GE recently announced a $500m expansion of its R&D facilities in China."
The European Commission recently released the 2011 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, which details R&D spending by Top 1000 EU & Top 1000 non-EU ‘big spenders’. I know we’ve been cautioned against using patent applications or R&D spending as metrics of innovation but it’s certainly interesting data to play with.
You Rise of Asia pundits out there will be pleased to know that, while the USA & Japan continue to top the Non-EU list, spending growth is slowing compared with the Asian tigers and rising powers.
· USA – 467 companies –160bn in R&D spending, up 10% on 2010
· Japan – 267 companies – 99bn, down 9.7%
· Taiwan – 50 companies – 7.5bn, up 17.8%
· Korea – 25 companies – 13.5bn, up 20.5%
· China – 19 companies – 7.6bn, up 29.5%
· India – 18 companies – 1.8bn, up 20.5%
· Hong Kong – 8 companies – 1bn, up 28.7%
· Singapore – 6 companies – 0.47bn, up 10.8%