Worthwhile R&D Spending for firms

The Dec.2007 issue of Spectrum (a monthly published by IEEE) has this article http://spectrum.ieee.org/dec07/5742 related to R&D spending of various firms for the year 2006. Toyota tops the list for 2006. The R&D spending is shown in different formats ie absolute expenditure, R&D Intensity(relative to size of the firm in terms of sales) and R&D Expenditure per employee. It points out that not all R&D investments can be compared directly as some firms have to spend more than the others just to stay alive like the pharmaceutical. But still puzzling is that Apple or Google which are considered to be the best innovation firms hardly make into the list in any format. Even the effectiveness of R&D in terms of patents applied don´t seem to explain innovation. So the conclusion is that the only wisdom in R&D matters and which is not yet a column in the comparisons.

This research does not contain any emerging economy like China, India, Brazil and so on. Even Australia seems to have been not included(or may be no organisation in Australia made into the list). It would be interesting to know what approach the mega merger companies from the emerging economies like Tatas will have to do it to grow considering that the R&D capabilities are so poor in these countries (particularly India). Would they have their R&D section located in India or in US or Europe (which is lagging but is aware of its shortcoming).  

What would be interesting is to know where is the research and development going on , in these firms. For example what share of the R&D of Toyota is spent in Japan and what share in US. Many companies are using the emerging economies as the base for such activities particularly IT related developments in India. In short, it would be interesting to know the country-wise breakup also of this R&D expenditure. 

  

Rememberance Day & Delhi- A City of Tombs?

Reading the article of Niall Ferguson in the FT site http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/240d56f2-8f31-11dc-87ee-0000779fd2ac.html , I remembered the comment of a friend of mine when I was touring him around New Delhi. As we were passing from Raj Ghat (where Mahatma Gandhi “Father of the Nation” is buried), Shantivan (where J.Nehru is buried) and then on various leaders (Lal Bahadur Sashtri,Indira Gandhi, Jagjivan Ram, Charan Singh/Devi Lal, Rajiv Gandhi, Giani Zail Singh…) are buried (Vijay Ghat, Sakthi Sthal,Samta Sthal, Kisan Ghat, Veer Bhumi, Ekta Sthal…). Add to this the various kings and Emperors who ruled  India at various stages. After a long day tour, my friend (he was a German) quipped ” Can we go to a place where people live and are not dead”. He was noticed that all these sites were well maintained with a complete cleaning staff maintaining it right up from the early morning courtesy the tax payers money and public trusts. While people actually lived were so dirty even in places where evidently tax collection was much higher and no sign of it being spent. 

Well, Mr.Ferguson´s observations on remembrance day and having a day nominated for some purpose or person are very much apt for having a memorial constructed in lavish style for every famous politician.  What used to be a thanks to immense contribution of an individual to an entire nation so wholesome that you can say that history of the nation would have been different and in all probability would have been a lot worse than now,  but for this person,  has now been turned to a political show.  I am not belittling the contribution of other politicians. But I sincerely feel the contribution of Gandhi and Nehru are far more reaching and time independent that we cannot treat them in the same platform as the other politicians. If every leading politician is awarded a ghat or sthal on his death. we might run into a space constraint for any more ”great politicians”!!