Global R&D spend falls dramatically

R&D spending as a percentage of total revenue fell by 17% since 2005, said Strategy&'s 10th annual Global Innovation 1000 Study, which analyses R&D investment at the 1,000 biggest-spending public companies in the world and this year found that R&D spend rose by only 1.4%. This was down from a 3.8% increase in 2013 and well below the 10-year average growth rate of 5.5%. UK R&D spend (£13.1 billion) was up by 1.4%, but this represented a drop from the previous year's growth rate of 6.4%. The highest-spending UK based companies were GlaxoSmithKline ($6.1bn) and AstraZeneca ($4.8bn). Both were down on their 2013 spend ($6.3bn and $5.2bn respectively). "We have found that companies across many sectors have been putting the brakes on their R&D spending," said Strategy& partner Jens Nackmayr. "This may be because they're better at innovating today than they were a decade ago and it seems that they can now do more with less. "Moreover, it's striking that the companies viewed by survey respondents as the most innovative – Apple, Google and Amazon – are not the ones spending the most on R&D, indicating that there is no direct link between spend and innovation." Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung topped the international list of the 10 most innovative companies in 2014 in the survey. Strategy&, formerly known as Booz & Co, is part of the PwC network of firms.