Industrial R&D Investment: a Comparative Analysis of the Top EU and non-EU Companies Based on the EU 2004 R&D Scoreboard

This paper presents the main results from the first 2004 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, which lists the top 500 EU companies and the top 500 non-EU companies ranked by their R&D investment. After a short description of the definition and objectives of the exercise, its content and main findings are shown together with results from other analyses performed within DG JRC – Seville, showing the impact of the degree of concentration at the company’s level on the overall industrial R&D stance. There seems to be a correlation between R&D intensity growth and net sales growth. Despite a competitive total amount of R&D investment, the average overall R&D intensity of the sampled European Union companies is much smaller than for their non-EU counterparts. This is related to a smaller proportion of output from sectors with high intrinsic R&D intensity, which is particularly noticeable in IT Hardware and Software and Computer Services. Although R&D investment amounts are comparable for the biggest firms, the share of R&D performers at the middle and the bottom of the EU-500 Scoreboard is much smaller in the EU than in the non-EU. The analysis indicates that national, regional and sectoral patterns deviate considerably from the overall picture of the EU. An entire section of the paper is dedicated to an inter-sector comparison of R&D-related indicators. The issue of concentration of R&D investment among top companies investing in research is investigated in more detail, in large companies, by sector of activity and by location. It is also proved that the sample of top R&D investing companies is statistically characterised by heteroscedasticity.JRC.J.3-Knowledge for Growt