December 2004
Special Report: R&D '04
Technology Review's annual look at corporate research trends and numbers including the R&D spending of 150 top technology companies, plus profiles of three hot research projects.
By Technology Review
Corporate spending on research and development remains the driving force behind innovation. Indeed, the five corporations with the largest R&D budgets alone spent $33.6 billion last year, more than the U.S. government spent on R&D conducted by federal agencies. But a troubling trend that began in 2001 continues: corporate R&D spending is on the decline. Last year's decrease of .6 percent is slight, but it follows sharper declines in 2001 and 2002, after more than a half-decade of robust growth. Perhaps most worrisome, the declines were not limited to a few obviously troubled sectors, such as telecommunications, but affected a cross section of industries and included some of the world's top spenders on R&D. In fact, three of the five largest corporate R&D spenders showed significant decreases in their 2003 budgets: the top spender, Ford Motor, cut its budget by $200 million, and Siemens, a long-time powerhouse in research and development, decreased spending by $900 million.
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