Within R&D, not Beyond R&D

[Chris Farrell]

Richard Ferrers has drawn attention to the latest briefing from the BEA on their treatment of R&D as capital for possibly connecting it to GDP growth – a connection essential to the rigor of any putative innovation metric. However NESTA has stated, in its glossary entry on R&D, that this indicator ‘poorly reflects the true level of innovative activity’. It has also identified the need to go ‘beyond R&D’. But if R is separated from D these approaches can be reconciled, especially if D is treated as expense not investment. Going ‘beyond’ R&D is unnecessary - but going ‘within’ it is. D must be interpreted much more diversely than just science or engineering. Most innovation professionals already practice this - and have done so for decades. As D separated from R&D is already in proportion to this there is good reason why D should not be thrown out with the R&D bathwater, and should receive a more nuanced attention than it currently does.