Research and development is on the up in UK industry, well, it certainly was in 2007 according to data released last week by the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills. The R&D scoreboard identifies the top spenders on R&D and shows that the total R&D spend in top 850 companies rose by about 7% in 2007/8.
Of course, 2007 is a foreign country, economically speaking, and the list of top spenders is different there: in addition to the expected names, the pharmaceutical and aerospace companies, also included are a couple of large investment banks. It is a fairly safe bet that when the 2008 figures are reported early next year there will be some changes, but hopefully not too many: research and development is the engine of science-based companies - no R&D, then no new technologies, and no new products.
The Institute responded to the release of the scoreboard with a welcoming press release which made a point about the way data is collected: the scoreboard charts the performance of the largest UK R&D spenders, rather than the total UK spend. While it is true that the big companies are extremely important, smaller science-based businesses also conduct extensive R&D, and it is just as critical, if not more so, for a small company to be on the cutting edge of product innovation and scientific research. The Institute's own R&D calculations which use slightly different government data (the differences between the analyses are somewhat arcane, and each method has its merits, but the Institute's analysis also includes data from smaller business R&D in addition to the big spenders) show an overall downward trend in R&D spending in high-technology businesses, and that it has been going on for a few years now.
This may seem unimportant against the success of the big spenders, but small businesses are crucial parts of the engine of innovation in the UK and are especially important in moving research from physics laboratories to the marketplace, and they need to be supported. And, or course, while they are small businesses now, they just might be the large businesses of the future.
