R&D spending is yielding fewer bangs per buck

More and more researchers are producing less and less, a leading economist of innovation has warned.

Giving the inaugural Christopher Freeman lecture at the University of Sussex’s Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) on 5 May, Luc Soete said that the link between a nation’s research investment and its productivity has become tenuous.

“An individual country’s high R&D intensity appears neither a guarantee for future growth nor productivity growth,” he said.