EU scoreboard reveals need for industrial R&D champs

The top 500 industrial R&D spenders outside the European Union increased their R&D investment by 3.9 percent to 195.6 billion [euro] in fiscal 2003. In contrast, the EU top 500 cut their R&D spending 2.0 percent to 100.8 billion [euro]. The compound annual growth rate for 2000-2003 was 1.2 percent for the EU-500 companies and 3.8 percent for the non-EU group. The difference in absolute spending levels is largely explained by the difference in GDP between the EU and non-EU worlds. These data from the just-released 2004 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard illustrate some of the difficulties facing European industrial companies as they strive to compete in today's fast-changing world. The Scoreboard compares R&D in the top 500 corporate R&D investors headquartered in the EU with the top 500 R&D-investing companies outside the EU (1). It offers a detailed overview of corporate R&D investment, sales trends and profitability as a tool for businesses and policymakers both to benchmark and to situate themselves within the global industrial R&D landscape. In contrast to official R&D statistics, which focus on specific countries and the R&D-performing sectors within them, the Scoreboard focuses on major R&D-investing companies, looking at their financial commitments to R&D, regardless of where it is performed. In this article, we present some key findings from the exercise.