Yearly R&D spending among the world's 1,000 largest public corporate R&D spenders has hit a record high of US$638 billion, according to global management consulting firm Booz & Company in its ninth annual Global Innovation 1000 study. However, despite the sustained overall increase in R&D budgets over the last decade, this year's findings show once again that higher spending doesn't guarantee bigger payoffs. Indeed, the 10 most innovative companies our study identified this year financially outperformed the world's top 10 spenders, despite actually spending significantly less on R&D. Additionally, the study shows that companies are spending 8.1 percent of their R&D budgets on digital tools to enable their innovation process either to boost productivity or to improve their ability to gain better insight into customer needs.
