The pressure of crisis on research and development
Categories: general
According to UNESCO Institute for Statistics global spending on R&D has reached almost 1.7 trillion US dollars. About 10 countries account for 80 % of spending. As part of the Sustainable Development Goals, countries have pledged to substantially increase public and private R&D spending as well as the number of researchers by 2030.
Business sector and public – private partnerships are the key for growth and productivity.
Private funding is crucial when it comes to investing in R&D and that is why it is recognized as an underlying factor for success. In top R&D country spenders important factor represent investments of business sector. Interestingly enough is that Slovenia can be found on 10th place, while the USA are on 9th. Relatively high percentage of R&D investments via business sector can be attributed to various public – private partnerships, but let us not forget tax deduction for R&D.
Why do we even talk about R&D as much as we do? Because R&D and innovation are major drivers of productivity and growth. When strategically and carefully planned, R&D will most likely kick back in and contribute to growth of the company.
Private investments in R&D confronting crisis = struggle for surviving.
Different impact of crisis on R&D investments in public and business sector is obvious, while SMEs take even harsher blow. According to EC research Effect of the economic crisis on R&D investment in the last major economical crisis smaller companies had much more difficulty in maintaining their level of R&D investment, similar is expected if spring 2020 due to COVID-19 will repeat. When crisis kicks in, companies struggle to survive and tend to cut all unnecessary expenses at the moment. R&D can at that point become a saviour or dead weight.
The key to maintaining R&D investments even in tough times is deliberate thinking ahead.
The answer to every R&D in the company is hidden in adjectives bigger and better. But even best project managers are on daily basis confronting project delays which result in lack of people and budget. In crisis even more so. When it comes to IT many of those delays can be easily avoided by using effective testing automation, which will speed up the development process, lower R&D costs and increase competitiveness.
How is that possible? Simple. Most often testing is being executed at the very end of the development process, which makes potential mistakes really expensive and time consuming. End-to-end testing is a must, but project managers should not leave the whole solution untested until very end. This way they can provide better efficiency, higher quality of the solution and better consumer experience. Simply put it – this way R&D can save up to 50 % of normal testing costs and gain up to 50 % of development time.