1Acknowledgements
The 2017 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard has been published within the context of the Industrial Research and
Innovation Monitoring and Analysis (IRIMA) activities that are jointly carried out by the European Commission's Joint
Research Centre ¨C Directorate Innovation and Growth and the Directorate General for Research and Innovation-
Directorate A, Policy Development and Coordination.
IRIMA activities aim to improve the understanding of industrial R&D and Innovation in the EU and to identify medium and
long-term policy implications.
The project was coordinated under the leadership of Alessandro Rainoldi (Head of JRC.B3 Territorial Development Unit)
and Rom¨¢n Arjona Gracia (Head of DG RTD.A4 Analysis and monitoring of national research policies). This document was
produced by H¨¦ctor Hern¨¢ndez, Nicola Grassano, Alexander T¨¹bke, Lesley Potters, Sara Amoroso, Mafini Dosso, Petros
Gkotsis and Antonio Vezzani (JRC ¨C Territorial Development Unit) as the main authors. Roberto Martino from DG RTD.A4
made contributions to the design and review of this work.
Michael Tubbs from Innovomantex Ltd. greatly contributed to this work, reviewing the whole analytical work and
providing industrial insights. Alberto C¨¢ceres Guill¨¦n from Alepro Data Analysis & Consulting supported the quality control
of the company dataset.
Data have been collected by Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing GmbH under supervision by Petra Steiner, Annelies
Lenaerts and Vivien Schulz.
Comments and inputs can be sent by email to: jrc-b3-iritec@ec.europa.eu
More information on IRIMA is available at: http://iri.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
European Commission - Joint Research Centre
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JRC108520
ISBN 978-92-79-76298-7 (pdf) 978-92-79-76299-4 (print)
ISSN 1831-9424 (online) 1018-5593 (print)
doi: 10.2760/912318 (online) 10.2760/308029 (print)
Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union
Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.The 2017 EU Industrial R&D Investment
SCOREBOARD
Table of Contents
Summary
Introduction
1. The industrial R&D landscape
1.1 Economic context and technological drivers
1.2 Portrayal of the R&D investment
2. Global industrial R&D trends
2.1 Change in companies' indicators in 2016/17
2.2 Long-term performance of companies
3. R&D trends by industry and region
3.1 Main changes in indicators in 2016/17
3.2 Ten-year change in sector composition
3.3 Company dynamics of selected industries
4. Performance of top global R&D investors
5. Analysis of the top EU 1000 R&D investors
6. Dynamics of the world's most productive companies
7. Companies' development of patented ICT-related technologies
8. Scientific publications by companies' affiliate authors
Annexes:
A1 - Background information
A2 - Methodological notes
A3 - Composition of the EU 1000 sample
A4 - Access to the full dataset5
SUMMARY
The 2017 edition of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard (the Scoreboard) comprises the 2500
companies investing the largest sums in R&D in the world in 2016/17. These companies, based in 43
countries, each invested over €24 million in R&D for a total of €741.6bn which is approximately 90% of the
world¡¯s business-funded R&D. They include 567 EU companies accounting for 26% of the total, 822 US
companies for 39%, 365 Japanese companies for 14%, 376 Chinese for 8% and 370 from the rest-of-the-world
(RoW) for 13%.
This report analyses the main changes in companies' R&D and economic indicators over the past year and
their performance over the past ten years. It also includes results from additional complementary studies on
companies' productivity, their development of ICT-related technologies and scientific publication activity.
Highlights
1. The 2500 companies raised their total R&D by a substantial 5.8% over the previous year, the sixth
consecutive year of significant increases. The increase was driven by the ICT services sector (up 11.7%).
The EU group raised its R&D by 7.0% - more than the global average, just less than the US (7.2%) but
much more than Japan (-3.0%). China increased its R&D by 18.8% but its total R&D is still small
compared to the size of its economy.
2. Turning to other performance measures, the 2500 companies increased sales by only 0.1% over the
previous year, operating profits by 8.7% and employee numbers by 1.7% but capex was down by 6.2%.
Overall R&D intensity (R&D as % sales) was 4.1%, capex intensity 6.7% and profitability (profit as %
sales) 9.5%.
3. Companies¡¯ R&D and financial performance varies greatly across industries and, since the sector mix of
different world regions is very different, so is regional performance. All major regions have two-thirds to
three-quarters of their R&D in three major industries but with very different mixes. The EU has 29.7% of
its R&D in automotive, 19.5% in ICT and 23.2% in Health with Japan fairly similar (30% automotive, ICT
24.3% and health 12%). The US, on the other hand, has only 8.1% in automotive but 49.2% in ICT and
26.5% in Health. China has some similarities to the US with 12.5% in automotive and 44.1% in ICT but
has only 3% in Health.
4. EU companies' R&D growth is led by automotive together with ICT and health whereas in non-EU
companies it is led by the ICT and health industries.
5. Global R&D is concentrated in the largest companies with 40% of total R&D accounted for by the top 50
companies and 53% by the top 100. A substantial number of the world¡¯s top R&D investors are based in
the EU with the top investor for the fourth consecutive year being Volkswagen. There are 16 EU
companies in the world top 50 and 30 in the world top 100. The top 50 also contains 22 companies from
the US, 10 from Asia and 2 from Switzerland.
6. An analysis of the Scoreboard¡¯s history database over the 10 year period 2007-16 shows that the EU¡¯s
share of world R&D has remained constant at 26% with the US¡¯s rising a little to 40%, Japan¡¯s falling
from 24% to 16% but both China and the rest of the world rising.
7. An analysis of the six largest R&D sectors over this 10-year period shows interesting sectoral and
regional differences. The EU outperforms or performs comparably in size (of R&D and sales) and R&D
intensity for Aerospace & Defence, Automobiles and Pharmaceuticals. But in Biotechnology, Software
and IT hardware the EU shows persistent weakness in most indicators such as size and R&D/firm or
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