IT's Big Spenders

TechEGrl writes "R&D spending increased by 17 percent in 2006, according to a new report on CIO Insight that ranks the top 81 R&D spenders. The spending was mostly targeted at consumer rather than business products, though Microsoft — not surprisingly the biggest spender with an investment of $6.58 billion — did throw significant change at biz apps like the Vista operating system. Investment in Internet search was dominated by Google, which more than doubled its R&D spending in 2006 and far outpaced competitors like Yahoo and eBay."

Comments

I'll see your girlie 81 and raise you 1000

[djupedal]

The text says 'top 81', then the article says 81 businesses were selected and appraised. The text labels Microsoft as being the biggest spender, at $6.58 billion, while also labeling this as 'software' related. The article points out how MS spent big on the latest XBox, which is hardware...someone needs to make up their minds. All-in-all, pretty sloppily written piece. But hey...it's a slow news day, so what the heck.

For a bit of fun perspective, China spent $136 billion on R&D in 2006.

And who could forget the Nov. 2006 study from Booze Allen Hamilton, which stated:
"R&D spending doesn't guarantee business success" - New study reveals that there is no relationship between R&D spending and sales growth, earnings, or shareholder returns.

The Booz Allen Hamilton study "Global Innovation 1000--Money Isn't Everything" analyzed the world's top 1,000 corporate research and development spenders.

It found remarkably that the pace of corporate R&D spending continues to accelerate, as many executives continue to believe that enhanced innovation is required to fuel their future growth.

Spending more doesn't necessarily mean gaining more. The study identified individual success stories. More pointedly it found no discernible statistical relationship between R&D spending levels and nearly all measures of business success, including sales growth, gross profit, operating profit, enterprise profit, market capitalization, or total shareholder return.

Booz Allen Vice President Barry Jaruzelski said: "Successful innovation demands careful coordination and orchestration both internally and externally. How you spend is far more important than how much you spend."

I pfft in your general direction!

Bill needs a new t-shirt

[supersnail]

I spent $6,000,000,000 and all I got was this loosy OS.